Will your travel insurance cover the sports and activities you plan to do?

Does your travel policy cover your sport?

It depends on whether your policy lists it, needs an add-on for it, or excludes it by name. UAE travel policies deal with sports in one of three ways.

Policies with a list. AIG’s table runs to more than 250 activities, each marked Activity Covered, Hazardous Sports or Activity Excluded.¹ Its Hazardous Sports column depends on the optional Hazardous Sports Benefits in Section 5. Conditions sit beside rows, for example hiking up to 4,000 metres with an official guide.¹ Liva has a list of covered activities, a list covered only if professionally organised and supervised, and a list of hazardous activities. Winter sports and golf are optional covers.² Orient groups activities as covered with no extra premium, covered without Section 8 Personal Liability, and excluded. Any activity not listed or confirmed in writing is excluded, and Orient invites you to call about others.³

Policies with an add-on. GIG Gulf defines Adventure Sports as winter sports, water sports, scuba diving, trekking and safari. Its definitions say which activities count as normal and which need the Adventure Sports option on your Policy Schedule.⁴ Allianz Partners has two versions of one exclusion, number 11 if you did not buy the Sports Cover add-on and number 12 if you did. Other high-risk activities must be booked as part of the trip through a regulated or licensed provider.⁵ Daman’s winter and summer sports extension covers recreational amateur sports, sea sports and skiing for 15 days, and pays medical expenses at hospital only.⁶

Policies with exclusions only. Salama excludes named sports including motor racing, diving with an artificial lung, horse riding, climbing and martial arts, any dangerous sport, competitions, and hazardous winter and summer sports such as skiing.⁷ Mastercard excludes professional sports, winter sports, sky diving, parachuting, hang gliding, bungee jumping, scuba diving, mountain climbing and potholing.⁸ Ask the insurer how it reads a general phrase such as notoriously dangerous activity.

How deep can you scuba dive?

From 8 to 30 metres, depending on the policy, the add-on and your qualification.

• AIG: up to 8 metres, recreational only, with a licensed diver or instructor.¹
• GIG Gulf: up to 18 metres with a dive master as a normal activity. With the Scuba Diving option, up to 30 metres with a dive master if you are PADI-qualified. Free diving is limited to 10 metres.⁴
• Allianz Partners: excluded over 20 metres or without a dive master unless you bought the add-on. With it, up to 30 metres.⁵
• Liva: up to 30 metres with a qualified diver or instructor.²
• Orient: up to 30 metres.³
• Salama and Daman exclude underwater diving using an artificial lung.⁷⁶ Mastercard excludes scuba diving.⁸

GIG Gulf’s option also covers kayaking or rafting up to Class II rapids.⁴

Are professional and competitive sports covered?

Not in the policies that mention them. AIG’s table applies only where the activity is not done on a professional basis.¹ Orient, Daman, Salama and Mastercard exclude professional sport in their own terms.³⁶⁷⁸ Allianz Partners excludes professional or semi-professional competition and most amateur competition, but not informal contests run by hotels, resorts or cruise lines.⁵

AIG, Liva and Allianz Partners ask you to use the recommended safety equipment.¹²⁵ The policies do not say whether a guide or operator condition is checked when you claim.

Three policies contradict themselves on a named sport

Orient lists bungee jumping once among activities covered with no extra premium and again among activities with no cover.³ Daman offers a sports extension, while its general exclusions name hazardous winter and summer sports such as skiing, and water sports, horse riding and mountaineering as hazardous activities.⁶ Liva lists golf among covered sports, and its medical section excludes golf claims unless the optional cover is on your Policy Schedule.² None of the three says how the passages fit together.

If your activity is one of these, ask the insurer in writing whether you are covered before you travel.

The small print

• Clause names. AIG, Sports and Activities table and Section 5. Liva, the three activity lists. Orient, Sports and Leisure Activities and General Exclusion 15. GIG Gulf, Definitions and General Exclusions f) to j), with Chapter H for the options. Allianz Partners, General Exclusions 11 and 12 and M. Sports Coverage. Daman, extension 9 and General Exclusions i) to m). Salama, General Exclusions and Section 4.3. Mastercard, General Plan Exclusion 14.
• Salama’s personal accident section. Section 4.3 excludes a similar list of sports unless a plan includes them for a surcharge. The General Exclusions state no such exception.⁷
• Daman’s exclusions. General Exclusions i) to l) name competitions and listed sports, including underwater diving with an artificial lung, and hazardous winter and summer sports. Exclusion m) names hazardous activities.⁶