Chase Ultimate Rewards® Travel Insurance
Many credit cards include automatic travel protections when you use your card to purchase travel. In this post, you will see the comparison of protection provided by each of Chase’s Ultimate Rewards cards including the Chase Sapphire Reserve®, Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card, Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, and more.
The following chart summarizes travel insurance provided automatically by each Ultimate Rewards card. Cells in green indicate best in class coverage, yellow indicates good coverage, red indicates worse than peers’ coverage.
“Pay partial” means that you can get full coverage even if you pay only part of your transportation costs with this card. For example, you could pay just the taxes and fees for an award flight. Or, you could pay part of a cruise with gift cards and the rest with the credit card.
“Amt paid for with card” refers to the portion of the trip expenses that were actually charged to the eligible Chase credit card. For certain cards, Chase now only reimburses the portion of the trip actually charged to the card. For example, if you booked a $1,000 flight and only paid $200 of it with your eligible Chase card and/or redeemable points from that card (using another card, vouchers, etc. for the rest), Chase’s trip insurance would now only cover up to $200 in eligible losses, not the full $1,000. Now, for full protection, you’d need to pay for the entire trip with the eligible Chase card.
Additionally, for Trip Cancellation and Interruption insurance, you must cover the entire cost of your trip with your eligible Chase card in order for the Trip Cancellation and Interruption insurance benefit to be activated. Partial payment on an eligible Chase card will not activate that specific insurance benefit.
* Each of these cards offers primary coverage outside of your country of residence. Unfortunately, the Ink Business Cash® Credit Card, Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card,and Chase Freedom Unlimited® cards all incur foreign transaction fees.
Based on the above chart, we can conclude that:
- Chase Sapphire Reserve has the best all-around coverage compared to other Ultimate Rewards cards (it also has the best when compared to ultra-premium cards).
- The Sapphire Preferred and Ink Business Preferred cards have nearly identical coverage with the Sapphire Preferred becoming even more favorable due to the addition of Emergency Evacuation and Transportation coverage. The only obvious difference is that the Sapphire Preferred offers primary coverage within your country of residence for personal or business travel. The Ink Business Preferred offers primary coverage within your country of residence only for business purposes. Outside of your country of residence, all of the cards in this roundup offer primary coverage.
Card comparison for other travel-related perks
| Sapphire Reserve | Sapphire Preferred | Ink Business Preferred | Ink Cash, Ink Business Unlimited | Freedom Flex, Freedom Unlimited | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foreign Transaction Fee | Waived | Waived | Waived | Yes | Yes |
| Points per dollar for travel | 4X | 2X | 3X | 1X (Ink Cash) 1.5X (Unlimited) | 1X (Flex) 1.5X (Unlimited) |
| Points per dollar for dining | 3X | 3X | 1X | 2X (Ink Cash) 1.5X (Ink Unlimited) | 3X |
| Cents per point redeemed for travel | 1 to 2 | 1 to 1.75 | 1 to 1.75 | 1 | 1 |
| Transfer points to partners? | Yes | Yes | Yes | No* | No* |
| Priority Pass Select Lounge Membership | Yes | No | No | No | No |
* Points earned on the fee-free Ink and Freedom cards cannot be directly transferred to airline and hotel partners, but you can move the points to your or a household member’s Preferred or Reserve card and then transfer.
Cards
Conclusion
It should be no surprise to anyone that the ultra-premium Sapphire Reserve card offers the best travel protection and perks. The Chase Sapphire Preferred comes in second with the addition of Emergency Evacuation and Transportation coverage and Ink Business Preferred card a third-place alternative. Like the Sapphire Reserve, both of these cards provide very good travel protections (not as good, but very good), no foreign transaction fees, and the ability to transfer points to most airline and hotel programs at a 1:1 ratio (the only exception to this is World of Hyatt where the transfer ratio for Sapphire Preferred is 4:3). When it comes to spending categories, the Ink Business Preferred has the edge over the Chase Sapphire Preferred in offering 3X for travel, but the Sapphire Preferred counters with 3X for dining and 2X for travel.
Note: This article was inspired by Frequent Miler – any content used with permission.
