Travel cover for the travel lover

Pluto policies have it all. We haven’t removed things you wouldn’t notice and we don’t just pretend to call it travel insurance. Your cover is divided into 3 clear sections: Cover for you, cover for your stuff and cover for your trip. Simple.

Some of the key numbers:

• Medical up to £10m
• Baggage up to £3k and up to 2 gadgets
• Cancel your trip up to £3k
• Come home early up to £3k
• Also, you're covered for delays, disruption, legal expenses and lots more!
• And you can add extras: business trips, winter sports, adventure sports and even travel disruption
• You can also choose your excess (the amount you contribute to a claim to make your policy cheaper)

The above limits are the most you can have, but you can decrease these as well as you build a tailored policy, this can reduce the cost of your policy as well. Always check your final summary to know how much you’re covered for.

You can also read full policy wording here to understand your cover and exclusions in more detail.

Yes!

You can choose to add either winter sports or adventures sports or both on to your policy. These are added to your policy as an extra and cover most of the typical activities you would expect. Make sure you check the full lists below if you’re looking for something specific.

Full list of winter sports and adventure sports.

All our policies cover a standard list of activities and sports as well.

Our prices are generally just below the average or the same as the other big-name providers. We don’t promise to be the cheapest, but we don’t want to be either.

There are two big reasons why:

• Like most things in life, you get what you pay for. So if you buy very cheap travel insurance, it’s more than likely to come back to bite you when you need to claim (either by being really difficult or your insurer fights you on the small print)
• Comparing insurance on price is very tough, and you should be careful. Think about what’s important to you and the type of trip you’re going on, compare insurance on how it covers you for this, and then look at price

This is why Pluto, we prioritise:

• Being fair when paying out claims. This is a big reason we partnered with Zurich, who paid out 99% of their claims in 2018
• Making it super easy to submit a claim from your phone, no making it hard for you so you give up before you start
• Explaining your cover to you in crystal clear plain English, so you know exactly what you’re paying for

If you're lucky enough to be going away on a long trip, then you need to ensure you're getting the right cover for the trip.

We provide 2 types of policies:

• Annual. Year long policy, covering all your trips. Each trip can be up to 45 days long
• Single trip. This policy starts and ends on the specific days you tell us. Importantly, you can get covered for trips up to 180 days (6 months)

So, if your trip is longer than 45 days, we suggest you get a single trip policy for that specific trip. With Pluto, you can then also tailor this policy to that trip, ensuring you have the right level of cover, activities, gadgets etc.

The moment you book your holiday. Always. This is so your trip is protected in case you can no longer go away (over one-third of claims are because of this). Lots of people don’t even know that travel insurance covers you for this. It’s a hidden gem.

Or, you save some money and you buy an annual policy. This will work best if you’re travelling at least 2 - 3 times a year. This will cover you for the entire year, as many trips as you want, as long as they are each less than 45 days. Again, lots of people don’t know about this. Save time and money and buy it for the year.

Sadly not, but we do serve the vast majority. At the moment we can’t offer insurance to people who:

• Have or have had a pre-existing medical condition in the last 12 months (e.g. epilepsy, cancer or diabetes)
• Live outside the UK
• Are under 18 or older than 46 years old

It’s worth saying these will change in the future, because we want to be able to provide cover for everyone!

At the moment, Pluto can only cover UK residents aged between 18 and 46 years old.

We know this may not sound fair or can be frustrating if you're younger than 18 or older than 46.

We're working hard with our insurance partner to expand the range of ages we can cover as soon as we can.

But we still want to explain why age is important in insurance and why we started with this specific age range.

Insurance is unlike other products and is one of the few examples where customers can be treated differently based on their age. The reason for this is that someone’s risk (especially when travelling), in general, can be influenced by their age. This is not a perfect measure of risk, but it's one of the factors we consider when determining what price to quote and whether a quote can be given at all.

When we decided to launch our travel insurance product, we knew we had to start somewhere, as all startups do. The quickest way to launch our product, for us and our underwriter, was to restrict the age range to what we consider our core audience, millennial travellers. This means the pricing and cover could be more targeted to certain age groups.

This is not intended to be a permanent age range and we're working hard with our underwriter to expand this soon!

We hope this helps, but please message us if you have any other questions.

What a silly question! Clearly not, it’s an early stage travel startup based in London focusing on helping people get the most of their travels.

But seriously, Pluto is a dwarf planet that lies in the Kuiper Belt, an area full of icy bodies and other dwarf planets out past Neptune. Pluto is very small, only about half the width of the United States.

We’ve called our company Pluto because we very much view ourselves, like the dwarf planet, as the little outlier, out there, amongst the big players, trying to make a difference.

Absolutely we do. Nothing beats a bit of travelling paid for by the company! The kind of trips you’d be covered for if you add business cover as an extra are:

• You’re attending a conference as a speaker or participant/partygoer
• You’re leading or attending some company training
• You’re a freelancer and are going abroad to run a client workshop

The types of things you can expect to be covered:

• All the same things the rest of your policy covers. This extra just extends the types of trips you can go on, it doesn’t change any of your cover limits
• Business owed devices or equipment are not covered though (even if gadgets are added to your policy)

It’s worth saying that you’re not covered for business trips in the UK or anywhere where you’re doing manual labour, like building your dream home in the Fjords. Sorry.

Yes, the more the merrier (literally). You and each extra person on your policy get £10 off their policy when buying it together.

On our single trip policies, you can take up to 2 more friends, partners, compadres, as long as you’re all travelling together.

On our annual/yearly policies, you can add one partner (no friends allowed, sorry). You and your partner don’t have to travel together on all of your trips, so when you do need some time away, you’re still covered.

Sorry to get all serious on you, but for (boring) legal reasons we have to make clear that a partner is: “A husband, wife or civil partner, or someone that you live with as though they were your husband, wife”. This isn’t your best mate or that flatmate who never cleans up after themselves.

Unfortunately, we don’t cover people under 18, so kids wouldn’t be covered. We’d suggest you get a family policy if you’re travelling with the young ones.

Because sharing is clearly caring, we wanted to reward you for spreading the good work about Pluto.

So, when you buy a policy, you can share your referral link with your friends or family and when they buy a policy (using your link), two amazing things happen:

• You get £10 refunded back to your bank account instantly, not credit, hard cold cash. If your bank is a bit old this may take a few days to show up.
• The person you referred gets £10 off their first policy, there and then, before they pay

You can only keep getting referral discounts until your policy is free, but if you keep referring after that, then you have our ultimate love and respect, hopefully, worth more than £10.

We get lots of different questions about who we can cover, what's included within Pluto cover and why you should even buy travel insurance in the first place. We've tried to bring all the most popular questions into this section, but if you can't find what you're looking for, you can search our FAQs.

Do you cover families or children?

Unfortunately we don't provide family policies or cover for children at the moment.

We're working hard to broaden the cover we can provide and this will include families and children eventually.

Right now we don’t cover anyone under the age of 18 years old, so kids wouldn’t be covered.

We’d suggest you get a family policy if you’re travelling with the young ones.

Why should I buy travel insurance?

This is one of the most important questions! We think there are 5 reasons why you should always get travel insurance when you're planning a holiday.

1. Injury and illness. We’re lucky in the UK that our medical care is free, but when you go abroad, that all changes. In the EU, certain countries will provide you with free healthcare, but not always, and when you leave Europe, the costs can get very very high, very quickly.

2. You can no longer go away. You’ve booked your flights, hotels, a few water sports and something bad happens before your trip and you can no longer go.

3. It’s definitely not as expensive as you think. Especially when you think about what it could save you. The average claim is over £2, 000. And, you can get covered for the year, for, under £40 (Europe) or around £60 (Worldwide).

4. It protects your stuff. S**t happens. It happens to everyone. Things get dropped, scratched, stolen, crushed, dunked — you name it! And, it’s no fun when that happens to your stuff. Travel insurance, as well as protecting you and your trip, also protects your stuff.

5. Peace of mind. Last but certainly not least, your own peace of mind. Consider all of the above, it’s a worry, a mental burden. Why not forget about all of these things and frantically checking whether you are covered while the plane is taking off and make getting good travel insurance part of booking your trip.

You can see our full blog on this topic here.

Do I need travel insurance in Europe?

There’s a lot of myths and confusion on this topic, so it’s really worth understanding. So let Pluto break it down for you.

TL;DR: You definitely need it when you leave the UK, even if you think it’s safe or low risk.

You are better covered in Europe than in other part so the world, but it's not nearly enough to not buy travel insurance. If you have an EHIC card, you're entitled to state healthcare (this can be free, but it can also not be free). You may not always have a choice which hospital you go to (especially in an emergency). And finally, there are lots of other areas travel insurance can protect your trip and your stuff that isn't do with medical care.

You can see our full blog on this topic here.