What insurance covers extreme sports?
Personal accident insurance
If you’re looking for insurance that covers injuries from extreme sports, you may wish to consider personal accident insurance. However, these plans typically do not cover injuries from sports in which you participate in a professional capacity.
The Zurich Sporitfly Sport Protection plan covers many common sports in Hong Kong, including some extreme sports like BMX freestyle, scooters freestyle, paragliding, diving and rock climbing. This plan includes cover for treatment of cardiac arrest or coma (up to HK$ 100,000 per accident) and surgery for broken bones, torn ligaments, and ruptured tendons (up to HK$ 20,000 per accident, 3 accidents per year).
As always, you’ll want to pay close attention to the policy wording and understand the coverage amounts, limitations, and exclusions. For example, the Zurich Sportifly plan only covers injuries that occur and are treated in Hong Kong. It also does not cover any kind of dental treatment, so if you get your teeth knocked out in a rock-climbing accident, fixing them won’t be covered by this plan (though it might be covered by a health insurance plan’s emergency dental benefit).
Travel insurance
If you’re traveling abroad to hit the crags or go scuba diving, travel insurance may be another option to consider for coverage of extreme sports (again, as long as you’re participating in a non-professional manner).
The SmartTraveller Plus plan from AXA covers a wide range of extreme sports, such as scuba diving, windsurfing, snorkeling, water surfing, snowboarding, jet skiing, bungee jumping, paragliding, sky diving, parasailing, snowboarding, skiing, dog sledding, and so on.
The TravelEase Single Trip Travel Insurance plan from Chubb covers some extreme sporting activities, but be careful to check their exclusions for coverage details. White water rafting, mountaineering or trekking, skiing, and scuba diving are covered by this plan – as long as specific criteria are met. For example, mountaineering and trekking are covered provided that specialized equipment such as pickaxes are not required.
As always, you’ll want to look at the policy wording to have a clear understanding of any exclusions. Most plans have restrictions on how high above or below sea level you can go. For example, they might not cover trekking at an altitude greater than 5,000 meters above sea level, nor might they cover scuba diving at a depth greater than 3,000 meters above sea level.
