International Insurance

[aaronwilliam]

I'm from the U.S. and I'm going on vacation to Germany and a handful of other European countries at the beginning of May, I'm looking for drone insurance that I can use in most if not all European countries. So far all I've found are companies who offer it only to German residents, and I've found 2 on-demand insurance companies but they only operate in the U.S., any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm a hobbyist not a commercial pilot.

 

[zocalo]

Depends what you need. If you want liability cover then I think you are really going to struggle at present as the specific requirements for drones are not really on the radar of most of the specialist insurers yet, especially for non-commercial flyers like yourself, although some of the commercial insurers will probably insure hobbyists if you ask them. Based on my research on UK insurers, of those that do provide photographers with liability cover only a handful currently seem to support drones, with the rest still working out the details or having already decided it's too high risk, and I suspect the rest of the world is in a similar state or worse.

If you just want to insure against accidental loss/damage then regular travel/equipment insurance policies will usually cover you internationally, but I'd recommend that you make it clear you are insuring a drone rather than just the more generic "photographic equipment" that tends to be listed as a default option and (as with any higher value items) get it listed as a specific insured item with approx value. You'll also have larger excess/total claim value caps to deal with, so make sure you are happy with the Ts&Cs and anything else buried in the small print.

Either way, I'd probably focus on looking for a US-based insurer that offers international cover since that's where you'll be filing any paperwork and paying the fees, and few insurers will want to deal with non-local clients anyway - as you've found with Germany - due to regulatory requirements. That's certainly the case for my current UK-based commercial photography insurer, as they demurred a policy citing financial compliance burdens when I tried referring a friend who currently lives in France to them.