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Does your travel insurance cover your kids?
Don't assume children are automatically insured
Whether you're making treasured family memories on a holiday this summer, sending your kids on a school trip next term, or waving them off on a backpacking adventure, you'll want to know they're protected should trouble arise.
Most travel insurance policies cover you if you need to cancel a holiday because something happens to a travelling companion, or to a member of your close family.
But you holding travel insurance doesn't necessarily mean your travelling companion or family are insured.
Here, we look at the types of travel insurance you can get for your children and key things to look out for when choosing a policy.
Insurance that covers your children
Insurers can cover children or dependants in different ways. As the name suggests, 'family' policies are designed to provide a hassle-free way of insuring the entire family under one policy.
Some insurers separately offer 'group' policies, which cover broader or larger groups of people and could be more suitable, for example, if you're travelling with other families and want to have a collective insurance arrangement.
But these won't necessarily meet your needs. For example, some family policies won't cover your child in circumstances where they're travelling separately from family (for example, going on a school trip). You might need to buy a separate policy just for them.
As the table below shows, insurers can vary in their approach to policies promoted as family-friendly, with differences ranging from the number of people you can cover, to whether that cover extends to a child under 18 travelling independently of adults on the policy.
Family policies
| Insurer | Maximum number of travellers | Child/dependant max age [a] | Can under-18s travel with adults not covered on the policy? |
|---|---|---|---|
| AllClear | 2 adults, 8 children | 20 | No |
| Allianz | 50 travellers total | 17 | Yes |
| Avanti | 2 adults, 7 children | 20 | Yes |
| Barclays Bank | No stated limit | 22 | Yes, if staying with relatives |
| Columbus Direct | 2 adults, 4 children | 17 | Yes |
| Goodtogoinsurance.com | 10 travellers total | 17 | No |
| InsureandGo | 2 adults, 8 children | 20 | No |
In July 2025, we checked the websites of 10 insurance providers to see what they said about the cover in their 'family' policies. Some had alternative options for larger or different kinds of groups.
[a] Dependants aged 18 or over must be in full-time education.
- Find out more See our tables rating over 150 policies for their cover.
The cost of covering kids
When it comes to travel insurance, the general rule of thumb is that younger customers get the cheapest premiums. However, this doesn't hold true for the very young.
According to Aviva, under-10s are three times as likely to have a travel claim than those aged 21-30 the least risky group.
We used a comparison website to obtain quotes for a single-trip policy covering a child for a 10-day holiday in Italy. The average of the cheapest five prices returned for a 10-year-old was £10.14; the average for a five-year-old was £15.98. Meanwhile, cover for a 25-year-old was £6.63.
Despite younger kids not necessarily being the cheapest for insurers to cover, some still offer discounts for children or dependants in their policies. Children aged under two, for example, are covered for free in Columbus Direct's annual policies.
Meanwhile, the travel insurance that comes with Barclays Bank and Nationwide Building Society covers children and dependants for free.
What to watch out for
Ensuring your child is properly insured requires the same due diligence you need to apply when getting cover for yourself.
- Medical declaration If your child has any medical conditions and these haven't been declared to the insurer via a medical screening process, these are unlikely to be covered. If you're uncertain about where your child stands here, speak to the insurer to confirm. Otherwise, you potentially have less cover than you think you do.
- Adequate cover Your cover needs to be fit for your child's needs. If they're covered under your annual European family policy, this won't protect them during an excursion to Disney World in Florida. Similarly, a standard policy might not meet the demands of a school skiing holiday without extra cover added. And if they're backpacking for extended periods across multiple countries, they might need specialist cover.
- Compounding excesses With many policies, excesses are payable per person, rather than per claim. So if the excess is £100, and you have to cancel a holiday for your family of four, this could mean the insurer deducts £400 from what it pays out.
Find out more Looking for the best cover for you and your children? Check our guide to find out everything from the basics of how different policies work to which ones have the best cover.
