Moving countries produces a long list, and insurance rarely sits at the top of it. This is the order we suggest, based on what tends to go wrong.
Month one
- Confirm exactly what your visa requires — the rules differ by visa type and change periodically, so check the current position rather than relying on a forum post
- Check whether your employer provides medical cover, what its annual limit is, and whether it extends to dependants
- Note the expiry date of any travel policy you arrived on, and put it in your calendar with a reminder two months before
- Find the private hospital nearest you and save its number
Months two to six
- Arrange local health cover if your employer benefit is thin, capped low, or absent
- Review life cover if anyone depends on your income, here or at home
- Check whether your insurer bills your nearest hospital directly, and get it confirmed in writing
- Read your home-country policies to see whether being resident abroad affects them — most people never do this
- Tell someone you trust what cover you hold and where the documents are
The employer cover trap
If your job includes medical cover, it is tempting to consider this box ticked. Two things are worth checking before you do.
First, the limit. Employer schemes are frequently capped well below the cost of a serious admission at a major private hospital, and the cap is per year, not per event.
Second, and more importantly, it ends the day your employment does. That is often the same period in which your medical history has stopped being blank — so the moment you most need to buy your own cover is the moment it becomes hardest and most expensive to get.
This is the single most common expensive mistake we see. Holding a modest personal policy alongside employer cover is not duplication; it is keeping a door open.
What people leave too late
Critical illness cover and long-term savings. Both are easy to defer indefinitely because neither feels urgent — and both get more expensive, or become unavailable, precisely as they start to feel urgent.
Critical illness cover in particular is priced on your health today. Every year you wait is a year in which a routine check-up might produce a result that changes the terms permanently.
If you have a family with you
- Check whether school fees would be payable in full if your income stopped, and for how many years
- Confirm your partner’s cover independently — cover through your employer usually ends when your job does, for them too
- Arrange maternity cover well in advance if you are planning a family, since waiting periods make it useless to arrange late
- Make sure your partner knows what policies exist and how to claim on them
A realistic first-year plan
You do not need to solve everything at once, and trying to usually results in thin cover across the board rather than adequate cover where it matters.
A sensible order: sort health cover first, because it is the most likely thing to be needed. Then life cover if anyone depends on you. Then critical illness. Long-term savings last, once the risks that could force you to liquidate those savings are already covered.
One question worth answering honestly
How long do you actually expect to be here? Almost every decision above depends on it, and most people avoid the question because the answer is "I am not sure".
"Not sure" is a perfectly good answer — it just points toward shorter commitments and more flexibility, rather than toward doing nothing. The worst outcome is spending a decade intending to decide.
If you would like a second opinion on any of this, a consultation with one of our advisors costs nothing and carries no obligation — including being told that what you have already is fine.
