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International health insurance is a special type of insurance that helps take care of your medical needs when you’re living, working, studying, traveling, or retired in a different country.
International health insurance is designed to meet the healthcare needs of people living and working abroad (i.e., outside their country of nationality).
Unsure of how international health insurance works or need help selecting a plan that’s right for you? Our step by step guide will help you choose, buy and use international health insurance.
Pre-existing medical conditions are conditions you had before you got insurance. It could be things like asthma or cancer that you were already diagnosed with.
Even if you live in a country with free, public healthcare like the UK, New Zealand, or Italy, having health insurance can still be important.
Understand the difference between inpatient, daypatient, and outpatient treatment, and when you might need any of them.
We speak in plain English, but sometimes insurance terms are inevitable. We’ve put together a quick glossary of the most important insurance terms.
Travel insurance protects you and your possessions while you’re travelling abroad. International health insurance covers you for medical treatment you receive while you’re at home and abroad.
Ready to explore plans and see prices for international health insurance? Here’s our quick guide to getting started.
3 things determine your eligibility for our international health insurance: nationality, where you live, and age.
There are some countries where we can’t provide health insurance. The rules are a bit different for new members and existing members.
You can keep your health insurance policy for as long as you want. There’s no age limit once you become a member. What’s more, you can keep your policy regardless of how many claims you make or the state of your health.
All our plans help you access private healthcare around the world, but each does so in a different way. We’ve named them after metals to make it easier to compare.
An excess (also called a ‘deductible’) is the amount you contribute toward your medical bills when you make a claim. The more you contribute, the less you pay for your insurance cover.
A waiting period is the time you must be insured by your policy before you can claim for treatment.
Direct billing is when your insurer pays the hospital directly. This means you won’t be out-of-pocket for your treatment costs.
A co-insurance is the amount you contribute toward your medical bills when you make a claim under certain benefits.
Applying for health insurance is easy. Follow this 4-step guide to get started with your policy.
Our policies for international health insurance are annually renewable. You must renew your policy each year to keep your cover for private healthcare.
You can pay your premiums by credit or debit card, bank transfer, or by direct debit if you pay your premiums in pounds sterling.
No. There is no refund if you don’t make a claim on your policy. If you wish to cancel your policy before your renewal date and you have not made a claim, we’ll refund you the unused portion of your premium.
Yes, your insurance policy renews automatically on your renewal date. We’ll collect your renewal premium from the card details we have on file.
Our plans provide cover for private healthcare while you’re living and working abroad. There are four plans with different levels of cover, but all the plans provide cover for the following types of treatment.
A medical evacuation, or medevac, is when you are taken from a place without suitable hospitals to a place with suitable hospitals. This can happen by road, sea, or air, and the vehicle you travel in will have life-saving medical equipment.
All our plans give you some cover for physiotherapy. Your level of cover depends on your health plan.
Yes—if you have a Silver or Gold plan. These plans give you cover for preventive health and well-being checks and cover for immunisations and booster injections.
Dental treatment refers to medical care provided by a dentist. All our plans provide some cover for dental treatment.
Here’s a quick guide on what to do if you need medical treatment, whether it’s a routine check-up with a doctor or you need emergency medical treatment.
How we pay your bills depends on the medical treatment you’re receiving. This guide gives you information on how we pay hospitals and reimburse you for any bills you’ve paid yourself.
Follow these steps to check whether you’re covered for a certain type of medical treatment. If you want to double check with us, we’re available by phone or email.
You can choose to have your medical treatment at any hospital or clinic within your coverage zone. We work a little differently from other insurance providers, who might tell you where you can and cannot have medical treatment. With William Russell, you can go to any hospital in any country that’s within the coverage zone stated on your certificate of insurance.
How you make a claim depends on what medical treatment you’re receiving. This guide covers how you claim for outpatient treatment (e.g., doctor visits) and how claim works when you’re admitted to hospital.
We aim to assess your claim for out-patient treatment within 10 working days.
Pre-authorisation is when we confirm to you before your course of medical treatment starts that we’ll pay for the treatment. Not all treatment needs pre-authorisation. This guide tell you which treatments do and how it works.
No, we don’t cover any administration or registration fees that your doctor’s treating hospital charges you. We also won’t pay any fee your doctor charges you to complete your claim form.
Please submit your claim for medical treatment within 6 months of the date of your medical treatment. If you treatment was more than 6 months ago, just send in your claim anyway and we’ll review it.
We don’t offer a no claim discount, which means there’s no discount or refund if you don’t make a claim.
Insurance is an important thing to have, but it’s equally important to know who is behind the insurance you buy. At William Russell, we want to explain this to you in a way that is easy to understand, even if you don’t know much about insurance or English may not be your first language.
No, William Russell provides insurance on behalf of the Allianz group. We design the insurance plans in partnership with the Allianz group, but our team are solely responsible for your member experience and the tech that powers it, helping you access doctors and hospitals, paying your claims.
William Russell is not a person; it’s a team of people. When Inez Cooper founded William Russell in 1992, she gave the company a man’s name because, at the time, insurance was a man’s world. Things are changing, but William Russell remains a special case. We’re proud to say we’re a female-powered organisation.
We work with one of the leading independent review collectors, Feefo, to collect honest member reviews. You can see what our members are saying about here.
Some people’s occupations/jobs put them at a higher risk of death than others. If you have an occupation/job that features on the following list, we cannot provide you with life insurance.
There are certain countries where we cannot provide life insurance. Please note that the rules are slightly different for new members and existing members.
How much you pay depends on how much you wish to insure your life for and your age. The higher your life benefit, the more you’ll pay in insurance premiums. Equally, the older you get, the higher your premiums get.
How much you’ll pay for your plan depends on your age, how much you cover you require, and your medical history.
Raising children can be expensive. Last December, the Child Poverty Action Group in the UK reported that the cost of bringing up a child is at least £190,000. Expat parents can expect that figure to be much higher, with private school fees, regular international travel, and all the perks that come with the expat lifestyle. Often, your income (or your partner’s) is the only way to pay for these costs of raising your child.
When you purchase life insurance, you choose the amount of money that we pay to your beneficiary in the event of your death. This amount is called the ‘life benefit’. When choosing your life benefit, you should consider your circumstances. People generally think about how much their family would need to meet existing financial commitments such as debts or mortgages. Thinking about these commitments may be a useful guide to how much you should insure. Read more here.
We do not offer term life insurance. Our Global Life plan is an annually renewable product.
You can buy our insurance plans if you’re an expat, a digital nomad or someone who travels at least 6 months of the year. In some countries, you can buy our plans even if you’re not an expat or a nomad.
Yes, you can delay the start of your plan—but not indefinitely.
We automatically cancel your plan if you fail to pay your premium by its due date. We usually allow your plan to continue if you pay the outstanding premium within 30 days of its due date.
Our international life insurance does not cover you for death due to medical conditions or related conditions that existed prior to the start date of your plan. This doesn’t mean you cannot apply for life insurance if you have pre-existing medical conditions. We may agree to cover you for those conditions, or we may issue a formal exclusion for those conditions.
Subject to the terms and conditions of the plan, we’ll pay your life benefit upon your death to your nominated beneficiary or beneficiaries. The insurer of your life insurance plan is AWP Health & Life SA, a French insurer in the Allianz group of companies. Allianz is one of the largest and most robust financial services groups in the world.
Yes. You can also increase your cover for death by accident if you purchase the optional accident benefit. The accident benefit will also payout if you survive the accident but it causes you a severe disability.
Yes. You can renew your plan for as long as you need, even if your health deteriorates. We’ll only ask you more medical questions if you want to increase your life benefit.
We think that annually renewable plans are more suitable for people living and working abroad. It means our members aren’t tied into long-term contracts if they decide to move countries, return home, or if their circumstances change. Even though your plan is annually renewable, we don’t ask you more medical questions. You can renew your plan for as long as you need, even if your health deteriorates.
You must be 69 or younger when you purchase your international life insurance. Our plans are annually renewable, and you can renew your plan until you reach the age of 70.
You can have more than one life insurance plan with William Russell as long as you don’t exceed the 20x salary or monetary maximums across the William Russell policies. For example, you can have one policy for your mortgage and one for your family; you might want your own life insurance plan in addition to the one provided by your employer.
There is a maximum life benefit of US$2,000,000 or £1,500,000 or €1,700,000. You can apply for Life benefit of 20x your gross annual earnings at the time you applied for your plan.
It depends on where you die and where your beneficiaries live. Before purchasing life insurance, you should check your inheritance tax obligations. You can write your international life insurance in trust to help your beneficiaries avoid paying inheritance tax or any other taxes.
Life insurance polices are usually quite straightforward. In short, if you die, your plan pays. But there are some things you won’t have cover for.
There are different types of expat life insurance, for example, you may have heard of level term life insurance, decreasing term life insurance, and joint life insurance. We provide annually-renewable expat life insurance: you renew your policy each year without the need for medical questions or examinations, and your life benefit stays the same.
To give you a quick online quote, we only need to know your age, where you’re living and working, and how much cover you need. We need to know your age because our premiums are age-related. They increase as you get older. We provide international life insurance, but we need to know where you live because there are some countries where we cannot provide cover (Iran, North Korea, Libya, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen or Switzerland).
Yes, you can use international life insurance from William Russell to cover a mortgage. We have numerous members around the world who have nominated their banks as the beneficiary of their policy with any residual benefit going to family members.
Domestic life insurance plans typically cover you only while you’re permanently resident in the country where you purchased the plan. That’s usually your country of nationality or another country where you’re living permanently…
When we start paying your income benefit, we suspend your premiums from your next policy renewal date. We’ll continue to waive your premiums for as long as we pay your income benefit.
Some people’s occupations/jobs put them at a higher risk of death than others. If you have an occupation/job that features on the following list, we cannot provide you with income protection insurance.
There are certain countries where we cannot provide income protection insurance. Please note that the rules are slightly different for new members and existing members.
International income protection insurance is a form of insurance that will cover you if you become ill or injured and unable to earn money while living overseas.
Our pricing model is incredibly complex. There are several factors that influence the premium we charge a member; too many to enumerate on a PDF premium table.
Please visit our provider network page for a full list of hospitals with whom we have arrangements for cashless access to outpatient treatment.
The currency of the limit depends on the currency you select when you apply for your policy.
Applicants for health insurance must be under the age of 76, but members can renew their policy for as long as they require—even if their health deteriorates. Applicants for life insurance must be under the age of 70. Members can renew their policy until age 70, regardless of their state of health. Applicants for income protection must be under the age of 56. Members can renew their policy until age 65, regardless of their state of health.
We have a different set of excluded countries for each of our product lines. An ‘excluded country’ doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have cover there. It means that we cannot provide insurance policies to people who are resident in those countries.
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