How to Recover from Getting Robbed While Traveling

Can insurance help if you get robbed abroad?

For many people, being robbed abroad is one of their worst nightmares. Especially if you’re in (relatively) unfamiliar territory, with no one to have your back. In that case, insurance is what can get you back on your feet.

Picture it: you finally get to that sandy beach you’ve been dreaming about, soaking up the sun in your favorite swimsuit. The last thing you want is to realize that your local currency has left you as quickly as your clothes.

Some cases of theft are frightening. You may have locked eyes with the robber, had interaction with them or had a weapon pointed at you. After this kind of encounter, take care of yourself. It’s totally normal to experience stress if you have to deal both with the mental aftermath and with the hassle of getting your possessions replaced at the same time.

In some cases, however, there’s doubt as to what happened. With things missing, you might be unsure whether someone took them or whether you’ve just lost them. All the while you keep thinking, how could you be that stupid? Just realize that there’s no point in feeling guilty or being hard on yourself. This is where insurance helps. But first, just get things sorted.

The First Things to Do If You Get Robbed in a Foreign Country

Right after you get robbed, calm down and keep your cool. As difficult as this may sound, there’s a couple of things that you need to take care of right away.

The first thing to do, is blocking your bank accounts. For every credit card and debit card that got stolen, temporarily block the account by using the app or calling the bank or credit card company directly. The sooner you do this, the less money the thief gets to spend before the account is frozen.

Don’t forget to have your sim card blocked if your phone got stolen.

When it comes down to it, your most valuable possession is your passport. Lose it and you’re stuck. Find out if there’s an embassy or consulate of your home country nearby. Contact them to see what they can do for you. Embassies can arrange to have a new passport sent to you by mail or to issue a temporary passport that allows you to travel back to your home country if you wish. Some consulates don’t have these permissions. If you’re in dire need, consider reaching out to embassies of big neighboring countries.

To get help from your insurance company, you need to do three things: inform them of what happened, file a police report and make a claim. For some companies, it’s important to notify them without delay. This is especially true if you’re hurt from an assault or if you’re admitted to a hospital or private clinic, in which case your insurance company can give advice on where to get treated. Depending on the policy, they may pay for treatment straight up. If your things got stolen and that’s all that happened (bad enough as it is!) then some insurance companies are more relaxed and allow you to make a claim even months after the incident. Contact them anyway to check. Next thing is to file a police report and make the claim.

Why You Need a Police Report to Make an Insurance Claim

There are quite some differences in the fine print of insurance companies, but one thing is universal: if you’ve been robbed, you need to prove it with a police report. This means that as soon as you get back to your feet after being robbed, you need to go to the local police station.

Something to consider is the language barrier. In most of Latin America, Spanish is the lingua franca. Big chance the police do not speak English, neither will they issue your report in English. In other places the report will be in French or German. Make sure that you’re able to communicate exactly what happened and which items got stolen. This needs to be in the report. Before you go to the police, wrap your head around what exactly happened. If you find yourself in a small village in China, bring a translator.

Police reports are detailed and thorough. They include a description of what happened, the date and place and often an official stamp. If the report is in another language, your insurance company may require a translation, but you can get this arranged later on, upon making your insurance claim.

How to Make an Insurance Claim After You Got Robbed

Insurance companies can ask for receipts as proof of the items that you were bringing along at the time you got robbed. If you frequently travel, work or live abroad, it’s best to make a photo of a receipt and store in a separate folder in your cloud anytime you buy an item. Good cloud backup services for this purpose include IDrive and Backblaze.

Often insurance covers the costs incurred by calling your credit card and debit card companies as well. Create a list of the phone calls made, of how long they lasted and which costs were incurred.

Find the online form for making claims at the website of the insurance company and fill it out. You will need to upload the police report. Also, it may be required to upload the receipts of your stolen possessions and your plane ticket to prove that you actually made the trip. Details that you will be asked about, include the exact date and place where it happened, which preventive measures you had taken and whether you made insurance claims before.

Insurance companies will look at the prices that you indicated in your online form, but what they actually pay is based on the current market value of the items that you had on you. That nice DSLR camera that you purchased ten years ago might be worth only a fifth of its original value today. Generally it will take several weeks before you get paid after making the claim.

Credit Card Insurance If You Get Robbed

With credit cards, it is especially important to act fast after being robbed. With some companies, if you call them within two days of being robbed, they limit your ability to withdraw to 50$. The exact policy varies for each company.

Big credit card companies like Visa, Mastercard and American Express all have 24/7 global customer service centers to help you. Rest assured, you won’t be the first to call them that your leisurely stroll in Rio de Janeiro didn’t go as planned. They will know what to do.

Bank Account Protections If You Get Robbed

A particular type of insurance you may not think of, is the insurance provided by your bank. Beyond creating a temporary block for your accounts, there’s more that banks can do for you. Often they will have a hotline you can call 24/7 in case of emergencies. Some banks offer wiring the money on your account to you for pick-up abroad. This service can be a lifesaver, as it allows you to get cash without the use of physical cards. Whether your bank offers this service at all, and if they provide it to all their customers or only to those on a premium, depends on your bank.

A company that is often used to make international money transfers is Western Union. With your permission, your bank can send the money left on your bank account. Depending on the country you’re in, it may take a couple of days for the money to reach the local Western Union office. Once the transfer is complete, you can pick up the money in cash at the local office. Officially, it is required to show your passport upon collecting money, but in case of theft the local employees may be more relaxed about this requirement.

Things That Are Often Excluded From Travel Insurance

Unfortunately, some items traditionally are excluded from being insured abroad, like cash. Often, there is a maximum amount of baggage that is covered in total, and separate maximum amounts for expensive items. These include jewelry, watches, sunglasses, hearing aids and wheelchairs.

Sometimes, smartphones are excluded from coverage, other times they are insured up to a certain amount, like 100$, 300$ or 500$, depending on the premium you pay. Laptops, tablets and that amazing DSLR camera and all its accessories often are insured up to a certain maximum amount. If you work aboard or have a photography hobby, keep this in mind when choosing insurance.

If you’re a sports lover, check the coverage for your equipment. Even for regular sports like cycling, surfing and boating there will be maximums. These maximums are relatively low so consider getting an extra premium to get sports equipment coverage.

When working in other countries, it’s particularly seducing to buy items that you wouldn’t find in your home country. After all, if you’re living in that Balinese traditional bungalow for two years, why not get that wooden rocking chair? Unfortunately, insurance companies often set a maximum coverage for items purchased abroad.

How to Feel Safe Again After Being Robbed

Right after being robbed, you become more aware of the dangers around you and will feel less safe than you did before. Looking over your shoulder more, putting your hand on your bag, thinking twice about bringing valuable items as you go out. It’s part of it. Luckily this doesn’t last forever, soon things will feel normal again. The point of travel isn’t to spend the rest of the trip on edge, it’s to actually enjoy the place you’re in.

With your newfound awareness, now is a good time to work on preventing being robbed and being prepared if the time does come.

Things to do to make being robbed less of a hassle:

• download the apps for all your credit cards and debit cards on your phone

• put the phone numbers of your bank and credit card company in your phone

• secure your smartphone with a pin or fingerprint

• store photos of the receipts of your travel items in your cloud, like IDrive or Backblaze

• store photos of your credit cards and debit cards in your cloud

• get travel insurance

Some robberies go down in the most boring way imaginable. Somebody runs off with your laptop bag, your handbag gets stolen at a traffic light, you lose your wallet in the streets and someone will pick it up. It always generates some form of stress. If you happen to become part of a story that you can hardly believe yourself, let alone your loved ones when you tell them, it would be an exception. Not everyday people are violently mugged in a hijacked airplane on their 24 hour flight to New Zealand, thus allowing the thieves ample time to completely empty all your accounts. Best thing is not to drive yourself crazy thinking about what might happen, but to be prepared in case it does happen.

Not All Travel Insurance Covers Theft the Same Way

This is the detail that trips people up after they’ve actually been robbed: plenty of nomad-focused insurance is built around emergency medical coverage first, with baggage and theft as an afterthought or excluded outright, while traditional travel insurance usually covers baggage theft up to a set dollar limit but is designed for a single trip rather than a year of travel. If you don’t check this before you leave, you can end up fully insured for a hospital visit and completely uncovered for the phone that just got taken out of your hand.

The right balance depends on how long you’re abroad, how expensive your gear is, and whether medical or baggage coverage matters more to you. We cover the actual providers, current pricing, and how to weigh those tradeoffs in our full guide to insurance for remote workers, rather than duplicating that comparison here.