This article is brought to you by Infinity Financial Solutions.

IT’S OFTEN SAID that there is nothing more important than your health and not many people would likely disagree with that. So how would you cope if you fell ill or had a serious accident in a foreign country where free treatment is not available?

How would this affect your family, financial situation or career? As an expatriate, medical insurance should be among your top priorities, in order to ensure that you receive immediate medical attention when required and are not burdened or even restricted in care by the costs incurred. Serious conditions could end up costing a lifetime’s earnings and so you want to be sure that you are adequately covered wherever you are in the world just in case.

Medical care costs in Southeast Asia are increasing on average between 7-10% per annum and this is having a knock-on effect on insurance premiums. The cost of medical insurance can be a deterrent, certainly for the older generation where the likelihood of needing treatment is greater, but there are ways of keeping the premiums to an affordable level.
• By increasing the excess and paying a higher amount when treatment is actually needed will in turn reduce premiums.
• Co-insurance is another option where you simply pay a percentage of the treatment costs up to a certain capped level.
• Putting funds aside and ‘self-insuring’ for outpatient treatment can also make sense and one can simply take out insurance for inpatient only.
• Those who don’t travel extensively and only need regional coverage will also benefit from a reduced premium.

It is important however to ensure that cost is not the only factor to base your decision, and to fully understand the difference in coverage between the variety of both local and international plans.

Infinity Solutions works with a wide range of international and local medical insurance providers and can provide an in-depth comparison between costs and coverage provided.

If you would like to discuss medical insurance options or a comparison between existing coverage and alternative plans, please feel free to get in touch.

Sam is a UK-qualified Independent Financial Adviser and strives to raise the standards of international financial planning in Malaysia. He has been based in KL since 2009 and represents Infinity Solutions Ltd in partnership with UK-based Wealth Manager – Tilney Group. You may direct any inquiries to [email protected] or call +6017.3499 686

This article was originally published in The Expat magazine (October 2017) which is available online or in print via a free subscription.