• Look at Beat that Quote and Money Supermarket to find the best deal for you.

What is pet insurance?

Pet insurance is primarily to help you pay vet bills if your pet falls ill and needs medical treatment. Some policies also cover costs for looking for your animal if it goes missing or is stolen, cancellation of a holiday if the pet is ill and emergency pet boarding.

The big cost to pet owners, on the whole, is vet bills which are going up all the time. Even small operations can cost £100s and larger ones, particularly for bigger animals, can easily slip into £1,000s. Pet insurance really makes sense when you look at the monthly costs. It can set you back as little as £4 a month for a cat and £7 a month for a dog for a basic policy.

No pet owner can get round vet bills any other way.  You can make an application to the Blue Cross which might help if you can show that you are on social security benefits. There is also the charity, the Peoples’ Dispensary for Sick Animals, which helps pets, but only the pets of the needy. Suddenly you start appreciating just what you are getting on the National Health.

Do I need pet insurance?

Yes, probably. Joe Inglis, well known as the Blue Peter vet and from Vets in Practice says  “I think that everyone should have pet insurance to keep vet bills down. It’s something that any pet owner needs because you never know when they will get sick or have an accident. You need to cover yourself.”

Chances are that if you have a dog, cat, or anything scaly that cost you a small fortune you will need to get it insured. A dog with a broken leg can cost you up to £2,000, treatment for an animal’s road injuries can cost around £3,000 and a cat with a blocked intestine can cost anything up to £500.

Pet insurance can also cover a wide range of eventualities, from paying out for advertising if kitty goes awol, to covering the cost of your missed holiday if pooch is poorly. The best pet insurance policies should cover vets fees for x-rays, surgery and hospitalisation as a result of accident or illness, and treatment of long term conditions. They should also include cover for legal fees should your pet be involved in an accident or attack a third party.  Benefits for death from illness or accident and reward expenses for stolen and missing pets are another benefit of insuring your pet. Some polices will also cover complementary medicine and behavioural disorders as well as covering holiday cancellation expenses if your pet needs emergency treatment.

As a rule, small pets like hamsters and guinea pigs are not worth insuring. Most of the time, they don’t live long enough to make the payments worthwhile.

What do I need from my pet insurance?

Your premium can be affected by a great deal of things. Obviously, the type of animal you have will play a massive part in your insurance, so will its age, pedigree and where you live (generally, vets bills are higher the further south you travel and are naturally way more expensive in London).

Of course young cats and dogs are cheaper to insure than the pets that are getting on a bit. Breed, medical history and how much ‘excess’ you will pay before the policy kicks in – £30? £60? – also affects how much you will have to pay in premiums. Don’t forget that a whole load of routine vetinary items, like being spayed, are not included in many types of cover.

It can be difficult to compare pet insurance policies as different ones have different types of cover so it’s hard to compare like with like. For a start, different companies have very different ways of paying out if you claim. Some pay you up to a total amount per year, or per condition or operation. Others will only pay for a single claim per year then other policies will pay for a single claim with no time limit.

Before you start to take out cover for your pet, decide exactly what you want and need from your insurance. For example, you might want extras such as:

• An emergency pet boarding allowance if you have to go away at short notice
• Insurance to cover your cancelled holiday if the pet becomes ill
• Payment for advertising the loss of a pet
• Death cover whether through illness or an accident

Getting the best deal

Getting the best deal is the trickiest part. There is a wide range of policies with all sorts of different bells and whistles (such as the extras mentioned above). It’s hard to compare like with like but here’s how to go about it:

Step one: Have a look at different deals

Make sure you read through what the different policies offer. The cheapest one may not be the best for you because it may not cover the aspects you need. Have a look on our comparison page by clicking here.

Step two: Push the price down

There are a few ways you can bring the monthly premiums down:

• Accept a higher excess (in other words, you are willing to pay a larger amount of the bill if you do have to have a visit to the vet).
• Keep your pet healthy by keeping his weight down and giving him regular excercise.
• Keep vaccinations up to date. Insurers are unlikely to pay out on a claim if illness could have been prevented by a vaccination. See our article here for ideas on keeping your vet bills down generally.
• Buying online can knock back the premium by 5%
• Insuring more than one pet with the same policy will reduce the total amount you pay.

What to look out for

• Pay-out limits. Most insurers will limit the amount of money they pay out to you. They can do this in a number of ways. The first is a yearly limit. This means that once the company has paid out a certain amount for vets bills, boarding costs and death cover etc. you’re on your own. Insurers will often try to sell you a higher priced cover to raise the yearly limits but rather than jumping at the chance to spend more money, ask yourself whether or not your pet is really likely to need that much money to cover its costs. The second way an insurer can limit your cover is to pay per illness. If your pet acquires a long term illness such as diabetes then your plan will only cover you to a certain amount and then once again you’re on your own. This can be particularly troublesome with older pets which develop illnesses that last a long time. Some policies will also only pay out for a specific period of time for a particular illness, so a policy may cover your dog for its first year of diabetes but not the second.
  

• Lifetime cover. It’s worth noting that life doesn’t always mean life. Check the small print on anything you sign. An insurer might well advertise lifetime cover but they’re likely to increase the premium as your pet gets older, and existing ailments might not be covered when you renew your policy. Also, insurers will often not insure pets over eight years old as they’re more likely to need the vet. It’s worth considering insuring your pets for life when they’re young then they will be covered.

• Excesses. Policy excesses vary between insurers. Check that you are not required to pay too high a proportion of vets’ bills yourself to make the policy worthwhile.

• Existing conditions. A lot of insurance companies will either charge you much higher premiums, or not cover you at all if your pet has an existing medical condition. This could be anything from a knee injury to a dodgy eye so you should check with the insurer. Also, a lot of pedigree animals are at a much higher risk of hereditary conditions so cover for these types of animals will always be higher.

• Theft. Surprisingly, pet theft is rife in Britain. As many as 500 dogs are stolen every month in the UK. Cats are also high up on the list and even exotic birds, reptiles and fish can be stolen. If you know your animal is in particularly high demand, is expensive, or is quite an attractive looking fellow then make sure your policy covers theft.

Alternatives to pet insurance

One way to avoid paying monthly insurance costs and risking your money going to waste is to set up a savings account that is your own ‘pet insurance’. This isn’t a special kind of bank account, it simply means that you pay a certain amount every month into this account which you earmark for vet bills. This way, you earn interest on the money you pay in, and if your pet doesn’t actually go to the vet then you’ll have the money to spend on whatever you like.

If you decide to take out this option then we recommend the Alliance Leicester Online Saver Issue 5 account which pays an astonishing 3% annual interest. The only risk associated with this idea is that your pet might fall ill before you’ve had the chance to save up enough to cover the costs, in which case you would have to pay out whatever is remaining from the money you’ve saved.

Getting started

• Check out the different kinds of pet insurance policies here.
• If you want the cheapest then try Tesco pet insurance from £5.00 a month for cats and £8.50 a month for dogs.
• To insure yourself set up a high interest savings account such as the Alliance Leicester Online Saver Issue 5 account .