WAS Discovery Travel Insurance Review: Features, Pros and Cons

Wise And Silent Travel Insurance, known as WAS, is a Brisbane-based travel insurance company that offers “tailored coverage” to its customers. This tailoring differs from the standard comprehensive travel insurance policies on the market, which usually have a set minimum for standard inclusions for policies, such as lost luggage cover and cancellations.

WAS Travel Insurance is underwritten by Pacific International Insurance Pty Ltd, an Australian insurance company based in Newcastle. While WAS isn’t listed on ProductReview, it has scored a 4.7 star review on TrustPilot from an albeit small number of 39 customer reviews.

Customers highlighted WAS’ staff communication, the ease of applying for coverage, and a “smooth and efficient” claims process.

WAS offers two types of plans, Covid Essentials and Discovery Plan. For the purpose of this review, we analysed the comprehensive option, the Discovery Plan.

As stated, WAS Travel Insurance works a little differently to most travel insurers. Its comprehensive policy is known as the ‘Discovery Plan’, which is available to those aged up to 99 years old and includes unlimited medical in its base cover.

For families travelling together, it’s important to note that children can be added to the policy at a lower rate, but they are not included within a parent/guardians policy as is the industry norm.

Once you start to add to the base cover, WAS Travel Insurance becomes even more complex, with only a handful of medical outcomes covered as standard and far more classified as optional.

For example, credit card fraud is not covered as a standard inclusion; instead, unauthorised use of credit cards can be covered as part of luggage and personal effects, should the policyholder choose to take out this optional extra. Personal liability is not covered automatically, but needs to be selected for coverage up to $2.5 million.

Any trip cancellations are only covered up to the amount chosen by the customer (ranging from $1,000 to $40,000 per customer) and travel delays are covered as optional extras, up to $2,000 per customer. Delays are reimbursed at a rate of $50 per six hours, which is below the industry standard of $200 for every six hours, however no excess applies to these claims. (For missed flight connections, these are only covered should the policyholder choose to add travel interruption cover to their plan.

Rental vehicle excess is also an optional add-on, with the maximum cover of $6,000 for those looking to hire a car during their holiday. In many policies this is covered as standard and does not require the traveller to add it as an optional extra.

Lost Luggage

When it comes to lost luggage, those with WAS Discovery Travel Insurance will need to choose it as an add-on as they are not automatically covered. The lowest option is $1000, while the highest is $10,000 (per traveller).

WAS will only cover an individual item to a limit of $1,000.

Medical

WAS Travel Insurance include unlimited medical cover within its comprehensive policy, which extends to additional expenses such as transportation to a medical facility or, in the necessary event, back to Australia.

There is also cover for a medical companion to stay with you during treatment and/or necessary medical-related travel, even if they themselves are not listed on your policy.

Certain pre-existing conditions are also covered if they meet the necessary criteria. The 44 automatically covered conditions include anxiety and depression, diabetes, sleep apnoea and many more.

Other conditions outside of the pre-existing conditions list will not be covered by WAS Travel Insurance.

Covid-19 is included in the unlimited medical cover, which is explained in further depth below.

Is Dental Cover Included?

Dental cover is included in the WAS Travel Insurance Discovery Plan, but not under the unlimited medical expenses. Instead, there is up to $2,000 covered for emergency dental treatment, which is more generous than most insurance policies, which generally top put at $1,000.

Yes, WAS Travel Insurance includes Covid-19 medical expenses within its unlimited medical coverage. It also includes cancellations related to Covid-19, however, that is dependent on how much cancellation cover the policyholder requests.

Related: Travel Insurance And Covid: Are You Covered?

What About Pregnancy?

Pregnancy is covered by WAS Travel Insurance there are unexpected serious complications of pregnancy occuring:

• Up to the 24th week of pregnancy if you’re pregnant with a single child; or
• Up to the 19th week of pregnancy if you’re pregnant with twins or multiple children.

The exclusions include childbirth; the healthcare of a newborn child; pregnancies with existing complications; or pregnancies in which the person has previously had complications with previous pregnancies.

What About Sports and Activities?

WAS covers a range of sports and activities, however, rather than specifying what is covered, it provides a list of the excluded activities being:

• Snow sports;
• Motorcycle or moped riding;
• Racing (except on foot);
• Polo playing;
• Mountain climbing requiring the use of equipment such as pick-axes, anchors, bolts, crampons, carabiners, lead or top-rope anchoring or other specialist equipment;
• Motor sport or motor racing (including training or practice);
• Hunting;
• Running with the bulls;
• Professional sports (including training or practice);
• Parachuting, hang-gliding or paragliding; or
• Scuba diving, unless you hold an open water diving certificate or diving with a qualified diving instructor

However, policyholders can choose to add additional adventure packs—snow, motor and cruise—which will then cover them for those sports.

WAS Travel Insurance prides itself on offering budget-friendly insurance policies to Australians; however, the cost of a policy with WAS isn’t as clear cut as many others—largely due to the many different inclusions that one needs to opt-in to.

Forbes Advisor Australia has run quotes against two of our top picks of travel insurance providers for Australians—Travel Insurance Direct and Allianz Travel Insurance—to compare the prices of WAS Travel Insurance when opting-in for a level of cover similar to what these two competitors offer automatically.

As Bali is a top destination for many Aussies, the data below is based on a 28-year-old Australian travelling to Indonesia for a week.

Related: A Guide To Travel Insurance For Bali

This analysis does not include other additional costs that would need to be considered, including sports cover, children travelling, pre-existing medical conditions and so on.

As you can see from the table above, opting in for the same level of cover that is offered as standard by competitors makes the WAS Travel Insurance policy the most expensive of the three.

It’s important to note that policy prices for travel insurance will change for a range of factors, including age, destination, length of trip and any specific needs required by the traveller. The above data is to be used as a guide only.

From the limited reviews online, WAS’ customer service staff members have been hailed as being “very patient and helpful”, with their knowledge “making the experience [of submitting a claim] much less stressful”.

WAS can be contacted by phone or email, with different email addresses and phone numbers unique to the service required (emergency assistance, claims, or general enquiries). The full list can be found online here.

Customers can also submit a form online to be emailed back, and are able to submit claims online or over the phone.

WAS may be a risky choice for some customers who choose to opt-out of the optional extra cover for the sake of saving money and end up being under-insured. Some travellers may not realise the importance of personal liability insurance and fail to select it, which could land them in hot water if an accident was to occur overseas. As a comparison, most other insurers include personal liability insurance as standard in their comprehensive policy: Travel Insurance Direct offers $2.5 million in personal liability, while Allianz offers $5 million—with caveats around snow and adventure packs.

Nevertheless, WAS may be attractive to budget travellers who are happy with a no-frills policy, but want to ensure they’re covered for the basics of medical and dental.

Featured Partners

1

Fast Cover Travel Insurance

Get a Fast Quote

On Fast Cover’s Secure Website

Medical cover

Unlimited, 24/7 Emergency Assistance

Cancellations

Unlimited, (Trip Disruption $50,000)

Key Features

25-Day Cooling Off Period, Australian Based Call Centre, 4.6 Star Product Review Rating

2

Cover-More Travel Insurance

Learn More

On Cover-more’s secure website

Medical cover

Unlimited, with a $2000 limit to dental

Cancellations

Yes, amount chosen by customer

3

Southern Cross Travel Insurance

Learn More

Medical Cover

Including medical treatment, doctors’ visits, prescribed medication, specialist treatment & medical transport costs

Cancellations

$2,500 with option to increase to unlimited