Health insurance through the DNV application, step by step
Insurance is not one errand near the end. It turns up at four separate points in an application, and the two that get run together are the two that should stay furthest apart. Here is where it actually appears.
Four points, not one
Most people picture a single task: buy a policy, add the document, done. In practice health cover appears four times, and they are different jobs.
- Before anything else — working out whether you need a private policy at all, which depends on how you work and how you will be covered.
- Before you buy — knowing what a policy has to do, so you are measuring against a standard rather than a price.
- Buying it — an application to an insurer, with health questions and a decision that is theirs.
- Evidencing it — producing the document, for the people it covers, when the office asks.
Run those in order and each one is small. Run them together and they become one large task with a deadline attached.
What you are doing at each point
1. Classify yourself. Employed or working for yourself, because everything downstream follows from it and the label on a contract is not always the answer. Employee or self-employed?
2. Establish how each person will be covered. Through the Spanish system, through something you bring with you, or privately. Each person on the application gets their own answer, and mixed households are ordinary. Do I need private insurance at all?
3. Read the standard before you shop. Otherwise you will compare policies against each other, which tells you which is cheaper rather than which is sufficient. What a private policy has to cover
4. Check what you already hold. An existing policy may be the right kind of contract, the wrong kind, or the right kind with the wrong people on it. Which kind are you holding?
5. Apply to the insurer. Health questions, possibly follow-up, then their decision in writing. Allow for it properly if there is anything to declare — declaring a pre-existing condition.
6. Set the start date deliberately. The date you apply to the insurer and the date cover begins are two different dates, and the gap between them is useful. When to arrange your cover
7. Get the document, and check the names on it. Every person covered, spelled as their passport spells it. What the document itself has to contain and how it is issued is a question for your insurer and for the office you are applying through — we do not state it here.
8. Submit, then keep everything. The policy documents are the record of what you were covered by for that period, and that stays true afterwards.
9. Plan the far end. Approval does not end the policy, and your position may change once you arrive. What approval does and does not change
The two steps that should stay apart
Steps 2 and 5 — establishing whether you need a policy, and buying one — collapse into each other constantly, and it is the most expensive thing on this page.
It happens for an understandable reason: buying is concrete and establishing is not. There is a form, a price, a confirmation email. Working out whether you need the thing at all produces no artefact and feels like delay.
But a policy bought before step 2 is a policy bought by somebody who does not yet know whether they need it, for a household whose answers have not been worked out separately, against a standard they have not read. Each of those is recoverable on its own. Together they are a purchase that has to be redone.
If you take one thing from this page: do step 2 before step 5, even though step 5 is the one that feels like progress.
What to ask the office rather than us
The sequence above is yours and does not change. What the office handling your file wants to see, and when, is theirs — and it differs between posts and over time. So three questions belong to them:
- What exactly do you want to see as evidence of cover, for each person on the application?
- Does the cover need to be in force when I submit, or from a later date?
- How long are you currently taking? — worth asking recently rather than reading anywhere, including here. Why we publish no figure.
Getting those three from the source is worth more than any general answer, including a confident one.
Lost track of which step you are on?
Tell us what you have done and what you are holding, and we will tell you what is actually left. Often it is less than people expect, and sometimes the next step is to stop and check something rather than buy anything.
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Common questions
Where does insurance come into the DNV application?
At four points rather than one: establishing whether you need a policy, learning what a policy has to do, buying it, and evidencing it. Treating it as a single errand at the end is what makes it stressful.
What should I do first?
Classification — employed or working for yourself. Everything else follows from it, and starting anywhere else usually means doing part of it twice.
What document will they want to see?
Ask the office handling your file. What counts as evidence, and when they want it, is their decision and it differs between posts. We will not state it for you, and anyone who does without naming a source and a date is guessing on your behalf.
When do I deal with my family's cover?
Each person on the application gets their own answer, worked out separately. One can be covered through the Spanish system while another needs a policy. Add everybody at the start rather than at the end — a dependant added last is the one who goes missing.
I already have a policy — does it count?
Check it against the standard rather than assuming either way, and check who is named on it. The requirements page is what to hold it up to, and a policy you cannot describe cannot be checked against anything.