Important news - Travel insurance for UK riders
 

Just renewed my travel insurance via Richard at Navigator Travel and he has made me aware of some important news I thought warranted sharing.

Navigator Travel currently offer a worldwide rider policy for up to 18 months (IFAIK this is the only policy of its type in the UK).

The scheme underwriting this policy will finish at the end of November. Whilst Richard believes it should be possible to find underwriters for a replacement rider policy the terms will be more restrictive and premiums a lot higher.

If you are setting off in the next few months you may want to call Richard and check your options.

Cheers,

Andrew

update
 

I saw the message too late doh and ended up emailing Richard.... here is what he said:

We can't help with this at the moment.
Following a succession of huge motorcycling-related claims in the last year, we have been dumped by our underwriter, as this made the scheme highly unprofitable for them.
We have a new underwriter, but they will currently only agree to cover motorcycling on short stay policies, they are not prepared to cover long duration motorcycling trips.
We have meetings with yet another underwriter this month, and we will be trying to get back to where we used to be with mototcycling cover for long journeys, though the cost will certainly be higher than it used to be.
Another thing that may be an issue is duration. We have always had an 18 month maximum duration on our policies and the rule recently has been that you must "intend" to return to the UK by the end of the 18 month period.

We have one other method of insuring long motorcycling trips, on a separate product, the "Adventures" policy, which we sometimes use for certain extreme activities that we cannot get covered elsewhere. However, the cost of this product for long trips is extremely high. I would estimate that 18 months cover on this policy would exceed £1400 per person! We can use this product to "top up" cover on other policies, not necessarily arranged through us, but the cost is still high, at over £1000 per person.

It may be that after the meetings this month, we will once again be in a position to offer sensibly-priced long stay motorcycling cover, though I think the 18 month limit could still be an issue
Regards - Richard

So fingers crossed everyone!

followingtarmac