To insure or not to insure? Overlanding has many risks. But other than vehicle liability insurance which is compulsory in most countries, the decision of whether or not to insure those risks is a matter for you. There’s your personal perception of the risks; your approach to risk-management; and your budget. Here’s the approach we took to overlanding insurance and the policies we took out along the way since we hit the road in 2014:
- Vehicle liability insurance: – ‘local’ policies – ‘international’ policies
- Vehicle comprehensive insurance
- Personal travel insurance
- Specific region issues: – Europe – Africa – South America – Central America/Mexico – USA/Canada
Note: this covers the situations and the policies that we found at the dates stated in each section. Obviously things change, so up-to-date research is necessary for current travel plans
1. Vehicle liability insurance
This is compulsory in most countries (with a few rare exceptions e.g. South Africa, Ecuador that we know of, where it is covered by a Government scheme) and you often have to show proof of cover at the entry border. You may also be asked at police road-blocks within the country to show proof of this insurance. It is therefore recommended to have this kind of cover wherever it is legally required.
In theory, you should (if you can find it) be able to take out vehicle insurance with an insurer anywhere in the world and the Certificate of Insurance should satisfy the border and police requirements in any country listed on the documents (see below how we did this). However, it is generally the case that local officials only recognise a cover-note from a ‘local’ insurance company with which they are familiar. So even if you can find a policy in your home country which covers you in other countries around the world, a policy with a local insurance company is generally recommended to satisfy local officials.
When we first set-off overlanding to Africa in 2014, we considered both ‘local’ and ‘international’ liability insurance:
(a) Local liability policies for overlanding insurance
Obtaining cover
Conveniently, where it is a legal requirement to have insurance, the cover is often sold at most major border crossings. However, it’s important to check this before you go to a border crossing (try looking at iOverlander entries at the borders for clues on this). Particularly at minor border crossings there may be no insurance office, or if there is one it may only open at very restricted times (i.e. when the clerk can be bothered to turn up).
Consider options such as: buying cover in advance either by email or on-line; or whether there are any local multi-country policies which avoid the need for new policies at every border (e.g. we found the Yellow Card COMESA scheme recognised by several southern Africa countries in 2014/15, and a MERCOSUR scheme recognised between several countries in South America in 2015/16).
If you don’t (or can’t) get cover in place either before or at the border, you could have one of two problems, either:
- You won’t be allowed to cross the border with your vehicle and you’ll have to either: do long detour to a different border crossing where insurance is sold; or enter on foot without your vehicle, catch a lift to the nearest town to buy insurance then return to collect your vehicle (we have heard of this happening at the border from Bolivia into Peru); OR
- They let you through the border, but you are then immediately breaking the law of the country by driving without insurance. This has happened to us twice, entering Mozambique and French Guiana. In both cases the border officers told us to buy insurance at the next town, but warned that we could be challenged by police for driving without the legally required insurance. In Moz it was a nervous two day drive on rough dirt-roads to get to an insurance office. The French Guiana story is here.
Relying on local insurance
So let’s just say you’ve got your local policy… you’re legal and insured against all liability risks… right? Well yes… and no. Yes, you’re probably legal on the road. But check the scope of cover and the financial limit of the liability cover.
As a foreign driver in many countries, if you are unlucky enough to be involved in an accident, the chances it being deemed your fault are quite high. At the same time, the chances of you recovering from a local insurer may be quite low. In the unlikely event that the insurance company seriously considers any claim you make, the policy will often only cover liability in respect of personal injury and not liability for damage to vehicles or property. If another person’s vehicle or personal property is damaged in the accident, you will probably have to negotiate compensation in cash on the spot.
The only good news in respect of these potentially ineffective local insurance policies, is that they are generally not expensive (we assume the reason the price is quite low is because they almost never pay out). So we, along with many other overlanders out there, view these local insurances as a necessary overhead expense with little more than an administrative value to smooth our way through borders and police-checks. When we set off overlanding in 2014 to Africa, we looked for an additional ‘international’ third party liability insurance policy to cover the actual risk.
(b) International liability policies for overlanding insurance
For a more effective international policy to sit-above the local policies (see above), we found an Axa-backed policy with Assurantiekantoor Alessie Insurance in The Netherlands. This gave us more confidence that, should the worst happen, we are more likely to have successful recourse to this as an ‘international’ policy than to a ‘local’ policy taken out for a few shekels at a border post.
We continued this policy for our time in Africa and it was reasonably priced. However, when we later moved on to South America Alessie was unable to provide cover for that continent and we were forced (like most other overlanders in that region) to rely solely on the local cover and its limitations noted above.
Note: if you find and take out one of these international liability policies, do check the scope of cover. We found that in Europe it was not possible to buy insurance covering the vehicle’s country of registration from another country. So our Alessie policy covered us in the whole of mainland Europe, but not in UK.
2. Vehicle comprehensive insurance
We asked ourselves what we would do if Cuthbert was heavily damaged, or worse still… written-off, in an accident? This could be a traffic accident, or a freak natural incident, e.g. a tree falling onto the roof. Having invested so much time and money in Cuthbert (well…. mostly money really!), we decided that we would ideally like to have Cuthbert uninsured against accidental damage.
We did not want insurance to cover the repair of every scratch and bump, but we did want cover for the ‘worst-case scenario’ of major damage or total loss. This kind of insurance is difficult to find but in 2014 we discussed it in great detail with specialist broker Campbell Irvine in London. It turned out to be very expensive, with an annual premium around 10% of the total vehicle value, but it is possible to reduce the cost slightly by agreeing high levels of excess/deductibles. We have heard that it might be possible for Americans to obtain international fully comprehensive cover via Clements Worldwide. But when we approached them, they said they would not insure a UK registered vehicle.
The cost of fully comprehensive vehicle insurance is, in many parts of the world (see notes below on Mexico and USA/Canada), outside the range of most overland travellers. We soon realised like most overlanders, that it’s ‘Big Boys Rules’ out there. The advice often given on overlanders FB groups is ‘don’t take anything you can’t afford to walk away from’. If you are unlucky enough to suffer damage to your own rig, you’ll either have to fix it at your own expense, or in a worst-case scenario… leave the wreckage behind and be grateful that you are able to walk away from the accident.
3. Personal travel insurance
First, to be clear, what we are talking about here is travel insurance and not health insurance. International health insurance is cover for routine healthcare and is famously very expensive. Very few overlanders take out health insurance, but many take out travel insurance for urgent treatment and accidents.
Some overlanders, particularly those travelling in developing countries where healthcare is of a reasonable quality and cheap, decide to skip this cover. We don’t think this is a great idea. It may be cheap to get, say, a broken bone re-set in the hospital emergency room. However, if you are unlucky enough to need time in intensive care, or be seriously injured in a remote place needing helicopter evacuation, the costs are likely (even in a ‘cheap’ country) to be very high indeed. This is the kind of potential event that we believe justifies the cost of travel insurance.
Google and you’ll find various options out there for travel insurance. After extensive investigations we settled on True Traveller Insurance in London (single-trip policy). These guys impressed us and seemed to really understand the sort of travel we are doing. We have been with True Traveller, extending cover for the whole duration of our travels since early 2014. We found their terms reasonable during covid when we stayed in Canada with our truck, rather than take the risk of flying back to UK during a pandemic. Also, we have recently (Dec 2022) had reason to make a claim on the policy. It was handled quickly, reasonably and efficiently; we are very happy with them and can highly recommend True Traveller for personal travel insurance.
Here are a few of the issues that we came across when searching for the right policy and our advice for anyone on a similar quest:
- Find a policy that will cover you as a permanently wandering itinerant. We found some restrictions on cover depending on your status, nationality and country of residence. World Nomad Insurance didn’t seem to care where the insured is deemed ‘resident’. However, the quote from them was very expensive for us. Check that your quote is valid for your nationality and residency status in the country where the policy is taken out.
- Check that it covers (or can be extended for) the full duration of your planned travel. Many annual travel policies cover travel for only three or four months per year. Several ‘gap year’ policies that we found, cover travel for up to one year but stated that they would not renew/extend the policy for a second year.
- Check the lists of activities and exclusions on the policy. If you want to say, rock-climb, scuba-dive or ski etc, you may need to pay extra. One company that we found excluded ‘safaris’ from a long-term travel policy. We explained that we were to drive across Africa in our own vehicle and would certainly be seeing animals at various stages of the trip. They couldn’t decide whether this amounted to ‘safari’ or not!
- Take the policy out before you start to travel. Many policies are conditional on the cover being taken out before you set-off.
- Check the geographical regions and remember to reconsider this as you travel. We initially took out True Traveller cover for ‘Worldwide excluding USA/Canada’. The premium is significantly higher for cover in USA and Canada, so we did not pay this increased amount until we were about to cross the US border from Mexico. Helpfully, although USA/Canada was excluded under our ‘worldwide’ policy, it did provide brief cover in USA/Canada for airport transits. So we were covered for a short time in Miami when we changed flights there en-route from El Salvador to UK for a quick visit home.
- Check the terms/restrictions of cover for countries/areas where your government advises against travel. E.g. due to security and crime risks, the UK Foreign Office advises British citizens to ‘avoid all but essential travel‘ to some parts of Mexico, which limits our cover in these areas. You may or may not chose to follow your government’s advice, but be aware that ignoring it could affect your travel insurance cover in those areas.
- Be open and honest in disclosure to the insurance companies. Disclosing a fact (say, a pre-existing medical condition) might or might not increase the premium slightly, but failing to disclose material facts could invalidate the cover and leave you uninsured when you need the cover.
4. Specific Region Issues
(a) Europe and UK
Travelling around mainland Europe in 2014/15, we had liability cover for Cuthbert via Alessi (see above) which kept us legal. But this policy was not allowed (under European law) to cover the country of vehicle registration, UK. We needed a separate third-party liability policy for Cuthbert on the roads in UK. This caused us a bit of a headache.
Getting cover in UK for our new truck (imported from Germany) was a ‘chicken and egg’ situation. We couldn’t get the truck registered without insurance, and we couldn’t get insurance for an un-registered vehicle! In the end we found liability cover with Liverpool Victoria but only if we took out a fleet (multi-vehicle) policy.
For travel insurance we relied on the True Traveller policy (see above).
(b) Africa
Note: we only travelled southern and eastern Africa, so this won’t cover driving down through the north from Europe.
For Africa in 2014/15 we took out the Alessi international liability policy (see above) in addition to local policies en-route. In South Africa (our arrival country) no insurance was required as liability was covered by some government scheme.
In eastern Africa we heard we could take out a local policy in one country and extend the cover across several borders with a COMESA Yellow Card. Under a cross-border agreement, the member countries recognise and accept each other’s insurance policies. You need to buy the ‘Yellow Card’ at the same time as your insurance policy, from certain designated insurance suppliers. The ‘Yellow Card’ then extended our policy to the other member nations. It worked out cheaper than buying a separate, third party liability policy for each country.
Initially we had great difficulty in finding any insurer that offered the Yellow Card. The insurance offices that we found had not heard of it. At the State Insurance Company in Zambia we were told that the scheme is only available for Zambian registered vehicles. Finally at Madison General Insurance in Chipata, Zambia we had success! Here we got a policy to cover us for the next 6 months through Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. The Yellow Card satisfied the police enquiries at all the road-blocks we encountered.
We believe there may be other schemes for other areas of Africa (we’ve heard of a Brown Card for central Africa) but we’ve never looked into this. Do some checking on Google and relevant FB groups.
For travel insurance we continued to rely on the True Traveller policy (see above).
(c) South America
In October 2015 we shipped to South America. We drove through every country except Venezuela. Alessie couldn’t provide Axa third party cover for this continent, so we had to rely on local insurance.
Initially we took out a MERCOSUR policy with Speiser Seguros in Buenos Aires. This covered the group of neighbouring countries: Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. It was quite expensive and we could probably have found a better deal had we left time to Google around for other quotes. Not sure whether we were lucky, but none of the police stops in these countries asked us to prove insurance at the roadside (just driving licence and vehicle registration docs).
From Bolivia, when our initial one year policy was almost at an end, we wanted to progress to Peru. For this we found Seguros Illimani in La Paz. This policy covered not only Bolivia, but every neighbour country with a border to Bolivia. This therefore covered most of the continent: Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Peru.
It was good to have cover in place before approaching the Peru border at Lake Titicaca. There was no insurance office at that border and Peru required proof of insurance at the entry point. We have met people who didn’t have cover pre-arranged and were sent to the first town and buy it. Also in Peru, several road-side police checks asked to see proof of cover.
Next came Ecuador but no insurance is available here – liability is covered by some government scheme.
The next new country for us was French Guiana where we had a bit of an insurance nightmare. French Guiana is part of the EU and our problem stemmed mostly from the fact that we were driving a European registered vehicle without European Green-card insurance (as would usually be required in the EU – this was pre-Brexit). We eventually obtained cover from CA2P Insurance in Cayenne (see here for the full French Guiana insurance story).
The next new countries were Suriname and Guyana both of which had cover available to buy at the border.
Our final new country was Colombia. Insurance was available to buy at the border. We bought for the 3 month period we expected to be there (the initial period of our visa and TIP). Many overlanders find Colombia more agreeable than they expected and want to stay longer than their initial visa period. It’s easy to extend the personal visa and vehicle TIP. However, extending the TIP requires proof of insurance. And short-term insurance for foreigners was particularly hard to find in cities away from a border. With hindsight, we really wished that we had taken out 6 months cover at the entry point. It wouldn’t have cost much more than the 3 month cover, and we would have had cover in place to stay longer in the country.
For travel insurance in the whole of South America we continued to rely on the True Traveller policy (see above).
(d) Central America and Mexico
In February 2018 we shipped to Central America. In Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua we simply took out local liability policies as we entered the countries.
Entering Honduras and El Salvador we couldn’t find anyone selling insurance at the borders. Officials told us it wasn’t required. Hmmm… it could be like Ecuador, which we know is covered by a government scheme, but we had our doubts. After a short time we learned that insurance is indeed required, but we had difficulty sourcing it in San Salvador. All agencies said they couldn’t cover non-CA4 vehicles (i.e. a vehicle not registered in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala). Eventually we found Todo Riesgo based in Guatemala who would arrange insurance by email to cover all the CA4 countries.
For Belize we bought cover easily at the border.
Entering Mexico at the Yucatan border from Belize in September 2018 there was no insurance available. From research on-line we expected this to be the case. We knew we would need long-term cover for Mexico as Cuthbert would be entitled to a 10 year temporary import permit. Baja Bound on-line arranged liability cover for us by email. We believe US/Canadian registered vehicles can do it on the website. For European vehicles they have a few additional questions, so email correspondence is required, but it was quick and easy.
For the first time since leaving UK, we found that fully comprehensive cover is available for vehicles in Mexico. The quote was obviously quite expensive, so we decided to just take the liability cover. After being on the road five years, we had got used to effectively self-insuring the risk of damage to Cuthbert.
For travel insurance in the whole of Central America and Mexico we continued to rely on True Traveller (see above).
(e) USA and Canada
In September 2019 we crossed from Mexico to USA. Getting insurance here posed one of our biggest administrative challenges of the trip so far. We finally obtained cover from Progressive – click here for the full story: Overlanding Vehicle Insurance USA-Canada.
For travel insurance in USA/Canada we continued to rely on True Traveller (see above). Due to the high medical costs in these countries, we had to pay a significant increase in premium for cover. We were able to extend cover for skiing whilst we were stuck in Canada during Covid travel restrictions. We like that ski cover can be bought in sets of 21-day packages. So it is not necessary buy extra cover for a year if only needed for a short time.
NOTE: the above named insurance companies and policies are mentioned purely on the basis that these are the polices we found and chose to use as being best for our personal circumstances at the relevant time. We do not (and did not) receive any sponsorship or reward of any kind for mentioning these companies. This blog does not amount to insurance or financial advice. We make no recommendations regarding these companies or any of their policies.
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