Travel insurance vs NLV health insurance
Why a travel policy and residence health cover are built for different situations, what each is designed to do, and what that means for a Non-Lucrative Visa application.
They are built for different situations.
Travel insurance is written for a trip: you have a home somewhere else, you are away for a defined period, and the policy is designed to get you treated and, if necessary, home again. Residence health insurance is written for living somewhere: you are in Spain, you use Spanish doctors the way a resident does, and the policy continues year after year.
A Non-Lucrative Visa application is an application to live in Spain. That is why the two are not interchangeable in a visa file, even when the travel policy has a high medical limit.
Where they differ.
Travel insurance
- Written for a trip of defined length
- Assumes you are resident somewhere else
- Usually centred on emergencies and getting you home
- Often has a per-trip or per-claim monetary limit
- Routine and ongoing care is generally not the point of it
Sanitas Visado cover
- Written for living in Spain, renewing each year
- Assumes Spain is where you live
- Access to the Sanitas network for routine and ongoing care
- Arranged without copayments
- Issued with the documentation a visa file needs
What this means for your application.
The question a consulate is answering is whether you will have health cover as a resident of Spain. A policy that ends when a trip ends does not answer it. Nor does one that pays out only for emergencies, if what is being asked for is cover comparable to the Spanish public system.
We cannot tell you what your consulate will accept — nobody selling insurance can, and the requirements are applied by the consulate handling your file. What we can tell you is what each kind of policy is built to do. The requirements page sets out what the Visado products provide, and do you need private cover? works through the situations where another route may apply to you.
If you already hold travel insurance
Keeping it is a separate decision. People often keep a travel policy for trips outside Spain and hold residence cover for living here. One does not replace the other, and holding both is not a problem.
Where to go next.
If you are weighing up cover for an NLV application: what the requirement asks for, the two Sanitas Visado options compared, what the certificate is and how to check it before you submit. Repatriation cover is worth reading too, since it is the benefit most often confused between the two kinds of policy.
Not sure which you need?
Tell us who needs cover and when you expect the policy to begin. We’ll prepare a personalised quote and explain the next step.
Phone, WhatsApp and email all reach the same advisers — see the contact page.