At the beginning of the year, Citi Prestige card holders were informed that one of their two courtesy travel insurance policies, the HL guarantee policy (HLAS) provided by CITI, would be suspended.

It turns out that this was only the first wave. Citi has now announced that the rest of the portfolio of his card will also lose his complementary HLAS policies, although fortunately, this change will not enter into force until April 1, 2026.

While this date remains at some point in the future, it is worth making a mental note for travel planning purposes.

How does Citi free travel insurance work?

First, let’s review the key details of CITI free travel insurance program.

What letters are eligible?

CITI offers courtesy travel insurance raised by Hlas to the main and holding card holders of the following cards:

• Ultima visa and mastercard
• Citi Premiermiles Visa and Mastercard
• Citi Rewards Visa and Mastercard
• CITI cash return card
• CITI+ card return return

How is coverage activated?

To enjoy courtesy travel insurance, eligible citi card holders must:

• Load the full rate of your air ticket to your card, or
• exchange a flight in its entirety or partly with points won by a rewards program associated only with the citi card, and load the balance of the rate to your Citi card

The first clause is simple enough: it simply pays its air ticket with its card.

What the second clause means is that the coverage is also activated when it redeems the miles of the airline and pays taxes and rates with its Citi card. This is provided that these miles originate in their Citi credit card.

Yes, I know it is a confusing concept. Miles are fungible; If your Krisflyer account has a combination of miles from various sources, how do you know exactly citi which ones use to redeem your flight?

I asked for clarifications before, and they told me that there must be documentation of a mileage transfer of at least the redeemed amount for the flight. For example, if you exchange a round trip ticket to the US, I must demonstrate that I have transferred at least 214,000 miles of the citi cards to my Krisflyer account.

In practice, I have no idea how strict they are in this, and if they will even bother to investigate (in addition, it throws many secondary questions, such as how recent the transfer should be?), But that is the official word anyway.

What is a little clearer is that if it redeemed tickets with, for example, Alaska Mileage Plan or Aeropan, would not receive courtesy insurance coverage, since none of the programs is a transfer partner for Citi in Singapore.

Keep in mind that if you have a Citi Rewards card, a CITI CASH return card or a CITI cash back+card, you must take the additional step to register manually. Registration is automatic for the ultima and citi premiersile cards.

How much coverage is provided?

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

The courtesy travel insurance ceases since April 1, 2026

Of April 1, 2026, Citi will finish the courtesy travel insurance for your cards.

What this means is that even if he used his Citi credit cards to buy tickets before this date, he will not have coverage if his trip is carried out from April 1, 2026 onwards.

Here are three possible scenarios.

The most interesting scenario is a trip that extends on April 1, 2026. In this case, it can only make claims for incidents that occur until March 31, 2026, so if it is in this scenario, make sure that all your misfortune related to trips is loaded by front.

For Citi credit, they are notifying more than an adequate warning of this change. Since the early thing that can reserve air tickets has approximately one year in advance, CITI card holders traveling from April 1, 2026 would already be aware of the Nerf at the time of the reserve.

Compare this with HSBC, which in December 2024 notified that they would eliminate the courtesy travel insurance on the HSBC Revolution card since April 1, 2025. Due to the much shorter timeline, there could very well be clients to buy air tickets with their HSBC revolution to travel after April 2025, which will now not obtain the coverage they expected at the time of the reserve.

Travel insurance for Citi Prestige card

As a reminder, the Citi Prestige card has already lost its travel insurance policy an Under Hlas, which ceased on March 1, 2025.

However, card holders can still enjoy courtesy travel insurance raised by AIG, which is the same policy offered to all World Elite Mastercard customers. I am quite sure that this should also be applied to Citi Ultima Mastercard, since it is also part of the world elite level.

Here is a brief summary of the coverage offered by this policy.

Conclusion

As of April 1, 2026, Citibank will end the courtesy travel insurance offered to card holders. If your trip falls after these dates, be sure to buy alternative coverage, preferably something that protects miles and points.

To be honest, you probably should not use your CITI cards to pay air tickets first, since this is not a bonus category for the Citi Premersiles or Citi Rewards (in fact, the latter explicitly excludes from winning 4 MPD).