Claiming on Your Travel Insurance

To claim your Budget Direct travel insurance, please:

• Complete an online claim and follow the prompts
• Download, fill in and send us the relevant travel claim form
• Send us the relevant documents to support your claim (the form will tell you which supporting documents are required).

Read more about making a travel insurance claim.

In most cases, you will be asked by the hospital to pay some (or all) of your medical costs at the time of treatment. In other cases, you may be required to provide a guarantee of payment, which you will still need to resolve. Please contact our emergency assistance team if you are overseas and need assistance.  

When you return to Australia, if you make a claim for your hospital bills and they are accepted, we will reimburse your medical expenses.

If you need any advice or help arranging your hospital expenses overseas, feel free to contact our team back in Australia.

Other travellers listed on the same policy (such as your spouse or direct family) can act on your behalf if you come seriously injured/unwell overseas. If your next of kin is not travelling with you, our Emergency Assistance and Claims teams have processes in place to allow them to help in the situation.

Budget Direct recommends travel insurance policyholders lodge their claims as soon as possible, ideally within 60 days of completing their trip.

The sooner you lodge your claim, the faster we can pay you any benefits you’re entitled to.

When you make a claim, we’ll ask you to provide certain documents that support your claim.

Supporting documents include ones that:

• Confirm the incident that led to your claim
• Prove the ownership and value of any lost, stolen or damaged items
• Show any costs you incurred.

They include:

• Travel itinerary
• Receipts
• Invoices
• Relevant credit card statements (redacting any instance of full credit card number)
• Airline, tour operator and police reports
• Valuation certificates
• Medical accounts.

The relevant travel claim form will tell you which supporting documents you need to submit with the form.

After calculating the amount payable for your claim, less any excess, we’ll settle it one of three ways:

• We pay the cash value, repair cost or arrange replacement of lost/stolen/damaged item (after deducting depreciation where applicable)
• We pay for the specified additional expenses
• We pay you or the party to whom you are legally liable.

You can choose your own, subject to our approval. You can also contact us, and we can assist in arranging a medical professional for you to see.

The only notable thing to consider when looking at coverage for medical treatment overseas is if a reciprocal healthcare agreement is in place. Thankfully, some countries have access to free healthcare for Australians, which may negate the need to make a claim.

Once we have all the information from you that we require to assess your claim, we’ll make a decision on your claim within 10 business days. This decision may be that further information is required from you or a relevant third party before a final outcome can be confirmed.

Yes, you can submit multiple claims if you experience various claimable incidents/events.

The only exception to this is cancellation cover. If you have to cancel your trip and make a claim, the policy will likely be voided, and another policy will need to be purchased for a new trip.

The benefit amount limits are the most we’ll pay each insured person per trip, except cancellation cover which applies per policy. 

For example, if a family of five has Comprehensive cover and all five of them have their luggage stolen, we’ll pay them up to $10,000 each (minus an excess of $200).

If you’re unhappy with any of our products, services, decisions, or actions, please let us know.

The first step is to tell one of our consultants what you’re unhappy about – they’ll try to resolve your complaint immediately.

If they can’t, they’ll refer you to our complaint resolution process.

Read more about Budget Direct’s complaints process.