NLV health insurance requirements
Spain's Non-Lucrative Visa requires private health insurance arranged for the application, with a Spanish-authorised insurer and full cover for the stay. The exact wording is set by the consulate handling your case, and it varies — so the job is to know what to check, and to check it against your own consulate's current list.
What the visa asks you to prove
That you hold private health insurance, with an insurer authorised to operate in Spain, covering you in Spain for the period of your stay, and arranged for the residence application rather than as travel cover.
Beyond that, the detail lives in your consulate's own checklist. Several consulates ask for cover without copayments; several ask for no waiting periods; the words each uses are not identical, and one consulate's silence on a point is not the same as permission.
What to check on the policy you are offered
- The insurer is authorised in Spain. Sanitas, S.A. de Seguros is a Spanish insurer registered with the Directorate General for Insurance and Pension Funds under code C-320.
- It is the visa version of the product. Sanitas issues a separate Visado variant with its own conditions. Confirm your documentation names it.
- Copayments. Both Sanitas Visado products are arranged without copayments — no separate per-use charge for covered services. What that covers.
- Waiting periods. Residents Visado has none. Platinum Visado has none on its core health-insurance cover, and some supplementary covers carry their own qualification periods. The detail per product.
- Cover runs for the period you need. The policy runs for a minimum of one year and renews on the terms set out in the contract.
- The dates work. Cover begins once the first premium is paid, so the start date needs choosing deliberately. Choosing a start date.
- Everyone who needs cover is named. An application is built person by person. What you will be asked for.
Consular wording varies
There is no single national checklist you can work from. Requirements are published by the consulate handling your application, and the same point can appear in different words — or not appear at all.
What we can tell you
Exactly how the two Sanitas Visado products are built: the cover, the age each is open to, the copayment position, and the waiting-period position per product.
What only your consulate can
Whether that satisfies its requirements. We make no claim that either product meets any particular consulate's conditions — that is decided by the body that sets them.
Two things worth holding onto. A checklist that does not mention copayments has not approved them; and a checklist that does not mention a point has not required it either. Work from the current list published by your own consulate, print or save it with the date, and take independent immigration advice where you need it.
Three decisions, three different decision-makers
Applications get planned as if this were one approval. It is three, taken by three different parties, and keeping them apart makes the process far easier to manage.
- Choosing the policy — us, with you. We help you identify and arrange an insurance option designed for your circumstances and your intended visa route. That is a question about the product, not about you.
- Accepting the insurance — Sanitas. The insurer assesses your application and decides whether, and on what terms, it can be accepted. That decision is the insurer’s, based on your declarations and its own rules. How that assessment works.
- Accepting the evidence — the competent Spanish authority. Whether the insurance evidence you submit satisfies the current requirements is decided by the authority handling your application, against its own instructions.
A policy can clear the first and still need work at the second. Clearing both says nothing about the third, which is why we make no claim about what any authority will accept.
Where an application centre fits
Applications in some jurisdictions are lodged through an external application centre rather than at the consulate counter. That centre may receive and check your documents, but the visa decision remains the competent Spanish authority’s. The Consulate General of Spain in London puts it plainly in its own published checklist: the leaflet “stipulates the legal requirements requested by this Consulate” and is “carried out in cooperation with BLS to facilitate your visa application”. The requirements are the consulate’s; the centre facilitates.
- Exclusive Insurance Agentof Sanitas, S.A. de Seguros
- DGSFP registeredC0320Y2155969D
- Sanitas International Expert
Check which Sanitas option is open to you
Send the dates of birth and the start date you have in mind. An adviser will confirm which policies are available to each person and prepare a quote, subject to eligibility and underwriting. No medical questions at this stage.
Rather ask a question first? Contact an adviser.