Hi Marc,
I'm considering buying Genki Traveler for my upcoming trip to Spain.

As you mentioned, waiting period won't appy if I'm already having another insurance active (being outside of my home country at the time).

Does the old insurance ending and Genki starting same day qualify as gap-less, or do I need an extra day overlap?

Hey 👋
No overlap is needed

Marc, another quick question -

I see from Insurance Conditions
that you do cover surfing, but no mention of wind-surfing or kite-surfing.
Does that mean those fall into the same category and are indeed covered?

And if that is not underwritten explicitly, what are the chances of the rejection in case of real accident?

Surfing
You are covered, but notfor big wave surfing,tow-in surfing, orin extreme weather conditions.

Any sport not explicitly excluded is covered. And -surfing falls under "Surfing", which is covered excluding some extreme variants.

If my ongoing insurance does not cover surfing, and I buy Genki starting from tomorrow, will the waiting period apply or it will become active immediately?

No waiting period

Hey guys any experienced nomads that can give me a longterm user feedback for safetywing complete health insurance? (Or another good provider that you have experience with) I currently have Allianz Care with a very extensive plan. I’m very satisfied with them. Anyway thinking about comparing. Id like to have an insurer I can really rely on for the next 5-10 years. Happy for any insight from you guys!!

Happy to answer. Fully licensed independent insurance broker here.

If these two are your options then stay with Allianz as it’s the only one in the comparison that is an actual and licensed insurance provider.
Always make sure - especially if you have long-term ambitions - that you understand which country’s law is governing your contract, who are the legal representatives of the company, which supervision authority or ombudsman would be your course of escalation in case things go sideways.
Legit insurance companies make that very clear.

Stay away from shady offshore businesses with Caribbean fake licenses.

Since you're looking for an alternative:
I got Foyer Global Health (via Christoph's company) and so far I'm quite happy with it. I didn't have a major health incident yet, but they did pay quite a few small-ish ~$500 things.
Previously, I used to have Cigna Global, my impression is that it is easier to make Foyer pay than it is to make Cigna pay.
The only down-side of Foyer is that their web interface looks like they haven't updated it since 2000 and their response latency is 1-3 weeks, but as long as they're paying the bills I'm fine with that.

Thanks guys!!!

"..than it is to make cigna pay"

@r3pl4y can you please share your experience or knowledge with cigna? 🙏 tia

In my experience with Cigna they usually expected me to submit near perfect documentation for every claim, which can be very tedious.
Obviously, this is within their rights, but they just seemed really pedantic about making sure that every single requirement is satisfied for each claim.

With Foyer, they seem to be more willing to accept claims even if not every requirement that the contract defines is fullfilled.
For example, the Foyer contract defines that every invoice from a doctor or pharmacy must have my full name + date of birth on it, but in many countries the date of birth is usually not printed on those invoices. I think printing the DOB on invoices is mostly a European thing. So far Foyer, has accepted these invoices anyway, despite the lack of DOB. Furthermore, it happened a few times that I submitted claims for pharmacy invoices with which I didn't add the doctor's prescription because the pharmacist took it when I bought what was on the prescription. In theory I have to submit a picture of the prescription together with the invoice for the prescriped product, but they usually accepted these claims anyway.

Makes sense! Thanks for such a thorough response 🙏

On a general note:
You can always help a lot to have a smoother claims process if you right at the doctor insist on a proper invoice that contains:
1. Your full name and DoB
2. The practitioner’s details
3. The ailments and diagnosis (ideally with an ICD code)
4. The prescribed treatment methods and medication

Your details (inc. DoB) are important to avoid fraud (yes, people really try to claim doctor’s bills of friends and family). If dgwmrnyj was able to get reimbursements without DoB then that’s probably also because of some consistency across several documents regarding the same case.

I agree with that.

Sometimes it can be difficult though.
For example I've had many cases where I insisted at a doctor's receptionist that they put the DOB on the invoice, but that was often challenging and I had variable success with that:

one time they had pre-printed invoices and some software which only filled in the fields, there was no field for DOB. The receptionist ended up putting the DOB together with my name into the "name" field.
one time the receptionist said "ok, no problem" and then she just wrote my DOB by hand on top of a machine printed invoice, I could have done that myself...
a few times they just said "sorry, can't do that, the software doesn't allow me to do this"

In Paraguay, and I think also in other South American countries, nobody prints DOBs on invoices. It seems like a completely foreign idea to the people here.

What you can always do is add stuff by hand and ask for a stamp and a signature on top of that. That’s usually a quick and easy workaround.
Or as a next escalation have a copy of your passport with you and ask them to stamp and sign it with the same stamp and signature that’s on the invoice.

All the insurance wants to know is who was actually being treated - you or someone else.

Great tip, thanks

I will repost here as it is a proper channel for it

“I said “I would not buy as a Nomad”. Genki is emergency health insurance.

Nomads travel (lost bags, delayed flights, cancelled trips) and do more riskier things than average vacation travelers (like diving, surfing, hiking ets).

If you are interested in more details, GPT can help to do a research and comparison of insurances available for nomads.

Our experience with emergency: We used SafetyWing before and got all the medical expenses reimbursed (more than 10000 usd) but had to pay everything UPFRONT and then got reimbursed (a month later). This was a huge surprise for me!

Not every nomad has lump sum laying around for a medical emergency. Nomads buy insurance so they can avoid this kinds of situations with unexpected lump sum payments… and what if the emergency situation is more than the amount you have available…

When you have emergency, you don’t have time to move money arround…or discuss situation with your insurance company if they can help paying the bill because you can’t afford to pay cash… You are on oxygen and painkillers…No time to discuss policy with your provider… That is where REMEMBERING the text of what you MUST do when you actually got an emergency is useful. I don’t think people even read the full health insurance text—let alone remember it.

I wonder, what if my husband was traveling alone as most of the nomads do… How would he deal with emergency if there is no one to read the policy and do what needs to be done to get the reimbursement later. There is ALOT OF things you MUST do if you want to get reimbursed, and if you don’t do them, most things will be excluded from reimbursement later just because you did not do things properly when you were unconscious having an emergency 🫣

If he was alone, he would have gotten maybe 30%. We got the money only because I read the police multiple times and was checking every document the the hospital provided to make sure it meets the expectation of the policy while paying everything upfront hoping that it would be reimbursed later.”