Citi credit cards ending complimentary travel insurance in 2026

At the start of the year, Citi Prestige Cardholders were informed that one of their two complimentary travel insurance policies —the HL Assurance (HLAS) policy provided by Citi —would be discontinued.

As it turns out, that was only the first wave. Citi has now announced that the rest of its card portfolio will be losing their complimentary HLAS policies too, though fortunately, this change won’t take effect until 1 April 2026.

While this date is still some time in the future, it’s worth making a mental note for travel planning purposes. 

How does Citi’s complimentary travel insurance work?

First, let’s go over the key details of Citi’s complimentary travel insurance programme.

Which cards are eligible?

Citi offers complimentary travel insurance underwritten by HLAS to principal and supplementary cardholders of the following cards:

• Citi ULTIMA Visa and Mastercard
• Citi PremierMiles Visa and Mastercard
• Citi Rewards Visa and Mastercard
• Citi Cash Back Card
• Citi Cash Back+ Card

How is coverage activated?

To enjoy complimentary travel insurance, eligible Citi Cardholders must:

• charge the full fare of their air ticket to their card, or
• redeem a flight in full or in part with points earned by a rewards programme associated only with the Citi Card, and charge the balance of the fare to their Citi Card

The first clause is straightforward enough- simply pay for your air ticket with your card.

What the second clause means is that coverage is also activated when you redeem airline miles, and pay for the taxes and fees with your Citi card. This is provided those miles originate from your Citi credit card.

Yes, I know it’s a confusing concept. Miles are fungible; if your KrisFlyer account has a mix of miles from various sources, how exactly does Citi know which ones you use to redeem your flight?

I asked for clarification previously, and was told that there must be documentation of a mileage transfer of at least the amount redeemed for the flight. For example, if I redeem a Business Saver round-trip ticket to the USA, I must show that I have transferred at least 214,000 miles from Citi cards to my KrisFlyer account.

In practice I have no idea how strict they are on this, and whether they’ll even bother to investigate (besides, it throws up a whole lot of secondary questions, like how recent must the transfer be?), but that’s the official word anyway. 

What’s a bit more clear is that if you were to redeem tickets with, say, Alaska Mileage Plan or Aeroplan, you would not receive complimentary insurance coverage as neither programme is a transfer partner for Citi in Singapore.

Do note that if you have a Citi Rewards Card, Citi Cash Back Card or Citi Cash Back+ Card, you must take the further step of manually enrolling. Enrolment is automatic for the Citi ULTIMA and Citi PremierMiles Cards. 

How much coverage is provided?

The amount of coverage provided depends on card. You can find the relevant tables below.

Complimentary travel insurance ceases from 1 April 2026

From 1 April 2026, Citi will end the complimentary travel insurance for its cards. 

What this means is that even if you used your Citi credit cards to buy tickets before this date, you won’t have coverage if your travel takes place from 1 April 2026 onwards.

Here are three possible scenarios.

The most interesting scenario is a trip that straddles 1 April 2026. In this case, you can only make claims for incidents that happen up till 31 March 2026, so if you’re in this scenario, please make sure all your travel-related misfortune is front-loaded.

To Citi’s credit, they are giving more than adequate notice of this change. Since the earliest you can book air tickets is about a year in advance, Citi cardholders travelling from 1 April 2026 onwards would already be aware of the nerf at time of booking. 

Contrast this to HSBC, which in December 2024 gave notice that they would axe the complimentary travel insurance on the HSBC Revolution Card from 1 April 2025. Because of the much shorter timeline, there could very well be customers who bought air tickets with their HSBC Revolution for travel post-April 2025, who will now not get the coverage they were expecting at the time of booking. 

Travel insurance for Citi Prestige Card

As a reminder, the Citi Prestige Card has already lost its HLAS-underwritten travel insurance policy, which ceased on 1 March 2025. 

However, cardholders can still enjoy complimentary travel insurance underwritten by AIG, which is the same policy offered to all World Elite Mastercard customers. I’m quite certain this should apply to the Citi ULTIMA Mastercard too, since it’s also part of the World Elite tier. 

Here’s a brief rundown of the coverage offered by this policy.

Conclusion

From 1 April 2026, Citibank will terminate the complimentary travel insurance offered to cardholders. If your travel falls after these dates, be sure to purchase alternative coverage- preferably something that protects miles and points.

To be frank, you probably shouldn’t be using your Citi Cards to pay for air tickets in the first place, since this isn’t a bonus category for either the Citi PremierMiles or Citi Rewards Card (in fact, the latter explicitly excludes it from earning 4 mpd).