Travel/Snowboard Insurance

It's time for me to organise snowboard insurance for this season - a job that I don't particularly like.

The problem with travel/snowboard insurance (or any insurance for that matter) as I see it, is that you don't know how good it is until you have to make a claim. If at that point your policy turns out to be not-that-great, unfortunately it's too late. Travel insurance is suposed to be an option that gives you peace of mind; but I view it as something I need to buy but probably can't rely on. If the chips go down it's probably going to come up short.

At least that's how I did view it; I'm hoping to change that. That view was no doubt tainted by the experience I had with my previous insurers, GoTravel Insurance, which wasn't good. That's why I'm going to take a bit more time to get a better setup. I want that peace of mind...

I'm currently looking at two policies:

Snowcard Travel Insurance
This company came recommended by a friend. Snowcard are setup specifically for winter and mountain sports and it shows. They do a good job of seperating the different levels of cover and provide flexibility allowing you to tailor your policy. For example, you can have injury/liability with cancellation, but not bother with personal effects.

Encouragingly, their Level 4 sports insurance includes off piste, snow-cat skiing, heli boarding, the snowpark and the halifpipe. You can extend to competitions if you need more advanced cover. I also like the way the site is setup, it's real easy to get a quote and you know exactly what you've selected. Their small print section is also very clear.

Here's a quick price guide to a few quotes I tried, all with level 4 cover (park, off piste etc):

• Single week, excluding personal effects: £35
• Single week, full cover: £41
• Two weeks, excluding personal effects: £48
• Two weeks, full cover: £56

Travel Snowboard Insurance by tagconnect
I read about the tagconnect policy in the Snowboard Club UK news letter and was immediately encouraged by the fact that they were endorsing it. As standard in the policy is cover for off-piste, park, indoor and dryslope use.

There's not quite as much information available as there is on the Snowcard site, and to get a quote you need to send an email or make a call, but those points don't make it a bad policy.

Here's a quick price guide:

• 6 - 10 Days: £27
• 11 - 17 Days: £35
• Annual multi trip: £55

Personal Effects
After looking around at a few different policies it seems to me that regular travel insurance isn't enough to cover more expensive items. Most policies seem to have a single item limit of around £300, which in many cases simply isn't enough. I'm gonna enquire with my home insurance to cover my camera etc.

Overall
I think I'm most impressed with the Snowcard insurance: everything is clear. They provide me with the most confidence. However, they are more expensive. When you look at an annual multi trip policy they end up being about twice as much as tagconnect. This makes the decision more difficult...

As a note, Dogtag Travel Insurance were also mentioned to me. I checked out their website but after 10 minutes of looking around I decided that Snowcard were more snowboarding-specific. The quotes from Dogtag also seemed to be more expensive than both of the two above.