Seven weeks ago I had the misfortune to dump my bike and break my leg while riding through Nicaragua. Luckily, I was carrying travel insurance through Multinational Underwriters. Now, with my leg almost back together, I thought I'd post a review of their service.

First off, they knew I was in a motorcycle accident. They knew it was my fault. They still accepted my claim, so they do apparently cover motorcycle accidents. I think this is important to mention because I've read of several other policies that are vague about whether they cover motorcycles or not. Heck, I wasn't 100% sure they'd cover me until they said they would.

Price:
I am a 28 year-old American and I purchased their Atlas travel insurance policy with the Adventure Sports extra coverage rider. With a $100 deductible I paid about $50/month. My father, a 60 year old American purchased the exact same coverage with a much higher deductible and paid nearly $150/month. I guess reasonable is in the eye of the beholder, but I found this quite reasonable for me but less-so for my Dad.

Immediate Post-Accident: Coverage in Nicaragua:
Two things caught me a little by surprise about MNUI while I was in the initial stages of dealing with my newly-broken leg. The first was that they offered no help or advice. I contacted them, as required, to let them know I had an accident. Their response was 'Thank you for letting us know. We've noted it in your record.' That's it. Thankfully I was with my Dad, who could contact the US Embassy and find out what hospital I should go to and could arrange transport there. If I had been on my own MNUI would not have helped me get out of the dilapidated public hospital I was first treated in (and where they wanted to do surgery on me!).
Surprise number two, which maybe shouldn't have been a surprise, was that they only ended up covering expenses that came from official medical providers. This means that, once I returned to the USA, they reimbursed me for all of my expenses from the private hospital I ended up in but that was it. Where I crashed my bike there was no ambulance service so I had to hire a pickup truck to get me to the hospital. MNUI won't cover that because it wasn't an official ambulance.

Once I got back to the USA (on my own dime), MNUI told me that they would cover all expenses related to my accident for six months from the date of the accident, with no restrictions on which doctor I see or what hospital I go to, and so far they're standing by that. I ended up having surgery on my leg. I got to pick my doctor and hospital and MNUI picked up the $31,000+ bill without giving me any trouble. They are also covering a good portion of my physical therapy--again with no restrictions on who I see. Their customer-service has been great. Much to my surprise, I have no complaints about them at all regarding my coverage here in the US.

All told, I am very happy with MNUI and have certainly got my money's worth out of them. That said, if I were traveling alone I would pick up some other suplemental insurance such as MedJet that would be more proactive in helping in a foreign country to go along with the MNUI coverage.

Hopefully, this'll be useful to some of y'all out there and hopefully none of you will have to put your insurance to the test this way.

Matt Pearsall