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Clarification on Insurance Requirements for Thai Retirement Visas

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing clarification of insurance requirements associated with Thai Retirement Visas. It kind of seems, kind of feels to me, I hate it when people say feels, but I guess feels is really the only word but it seems to me and feels to me that I have been talking about insurance in a Retirement Visa context a lot lately. I have got a lot of inquiries, I have got a lot of communication from folks saying "I am just not understanding what you are talking about with respect to "Is Insurance required or not?"  So I hope this video will provide some clarification. 

I am going to go ahead and start off by getting into a recent article from the Pattaya Mail, that is thepattayamail.com, the article is titled: Thai Elite Visa Gives the Retirement Extension a Run for its Money. There is some interesting insight into comparison between the Retirement Visa and the Elite Visa. I urge folks who are watching this video to go check that out on thepattayamail.com. Quoting directly from one snippet that I thought really distilled this down and at the same time requires a little bit of clarification so that folks can understand exactly what we are talking about here. Quoting directly: "Thai Embassies worldwide are now stating that any kind of Visa issued for retirement, be it an O or an annual O-A or a 10-year O-X, now requires general medical insurance worth at least 400,000 Baht inpatient and 40,000 Baht outpatient. This is in addition to the COVID insurance required for all visas requiring approval by a Certificate of Entry in the country of departure. However, COVID insurance is easily available online for anyone without the infection aged 0 to 99 years." 

So a couple of things. Let's start this off. "Thai Embassies worldwide are now stating" - that is a very different thing. That is Embassies operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand. We are not, I repeat NOT talking about Ministry of Interior specifically the Immigration apparatus within Thailand. So those who are in Thailand who have a retirement, specifically an O Retirement Visa and we have gone through this at length in a number of videos on this channel, the insurance requirement is still not there.

Those who are abroad and who are looking to for example re-enter Thailand, because currently even if you have a Visa for Thailand you still have to go through an Embassy or a Consulate in order to process a Certificate of Entry and we have gone into great detail on this channel regarding what Certificates of Entry are, but long story short if you are going through an Embassy abroad even if you have an O Retirement Visa, you are still going to have to get the insurance, 400,000 Baht inpatient 40,000 Baht outpatient, in order to go ahead and get that Certificate of Entry issued and ultimately get into Thailand and at the end of the day, getting admitted to the country is the name of the game in the Immigration game; that is what your goal is. So notwithstanding the fact that if one was in Thailand and seeking an extension of O Retirement Visa status, notwithstanding the fact that it would be the case that they did not need insurance to do that in Thailand, if they want to re-enter Thailand on that same O Retirement Visa, yes insurance is required as a prerequisite associated with issuance of the Certificate of Entry. 

I hope this provides some clarification. It is a really sort of nuanced, nettlesome overall issue where you have this O Retirement versus O-A and now you add on the extra layer of well are you dealing with it in-country versus abroad. We hope that this provides clarification. If you are abroad pretty much anybody in retirement status is going to need insurance but if you are in Thailand and you have an O Retirement Visa, insurance is not necessarily a requirement for extension.