Whether you’re headed to Haiti as a volunteer helping to restore the earthquake-ravaged country, or to Iraq as an employee rebuilding its infrastructure, or even off the shores of Somalia as ship crewmember and scuba diving adventurist, you or your boss will most likely be looking at higher premiums – if you can get life insurance at all.
All three countries are included on the U.S. State Department’s travel warning list, which is updated constantly, and which insurance brokers say is used to determine how much you will be charged for a new or updated life policy – or if you will be offered a policy altogether.
According to the Web site, travel warnings are issued to describe long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable, or when a U.S. embassy or consulate closes, restricting government aid to its citizens there.
The list includes war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, Chad and Sudan with their rebel violence and Mexico with its violence among drug cartels. In each case, the chances of being kidnapped and held for ransom, or injured or killed in the crossfire, are real.
“The more unstable and dangerous a country is and the more likely something bad will happen, the less likely you are to get insurance, not even from Lloyd’s of London, which provides specialty insurance if you can pay the price,” says Ryan Pinney, a high-risk specialist with Pinney Insurance Center, Inc. in Roseville, Calif.
Members of the military going into war zones have coverage through the government-provided Servicemen’s Group Life Insurance, which Pinney says costs about $24 a month for $400,000 coverage. In addition, many private insurance companies cover all military members at no extra cost,” says Michael Tessler, president of Brokerage Unlimited in St. Louis, Mo.
However, most companies won’t insure you if you are going to a war zone as a contractor or working on an oil rig off the coast of Nigeria.
Iaian Donald, with Control Risks, an independent specialty risk consultancy, says some companies that send workers to dangerous places will pay for their employees’ life insurance as part of their accident policy. Huge corporations like Haliburton, have global policies to cover any destination. “The price can be nominal if the company is big enough,” Donald says. Companies that send employees to a particularly dangerous place, including foreign journalists, can buy a policy from a high-risk specialist such as Lloyd’s of London for a certain number of staff and the underwriter will come up with a price, Donald says.
Pinney says if you’re just flying into Afghanistan’s main airport, which is a green zone, and don’t leave the area, and can document that, insurance companies will insure you.
If you’re doing long-term missionary work in a dangerous country with no easy access to good medical care, few insurance companies will insure you, Tessler says.
If you’re a member of the American Red Cross or the Peace Corp., Pinney says you will need to have your own life insurance as neither agency provides it for their volunteers. He says you would probably be limited to standard health class if embarking on a two-week trip to help a dangerous country like Haiti, which means you’ll have a mid-rating if you are relatively healthy. He says underwriters will look at where you’re going, what you’ll be doing while there and how long you’ll be gone, to determine a price.
“It could cost you as much as 25 to 50 percent more for a policy because of the danger,” Pinney says.