Is Pet Insurance Worth It?
- A comprehensive Pet Insurance policy may be able to cover up to 100% of your veterinary bills.
- Without pet insurance, any medical fees will need to be paid for directly by the owner.
- Choosing which option is best for you is nuanced, with many factors impacting the cost and value of pet insurance premiums.
When a new pet becomes a family member, ensuring you’re prepared for any accidents or unforeseen medical issues, can sometimes get forgotten in all the excitement. Should your furry friend need to visit the vet after an accident or to investigate an illness, cost being a barrier to care can cause a huge amount of stress and lead to having to make some impossible choices. Whether or not you can afford the sudden cost of having your pet treated if anything ever happened to them is the key consideration when it comes to understanding if pet insurance is worth purchasing.
There are plenty of policies available with different levels of cover and all of these will impact the overall cost and availability of any veterinary care. To help you understand if pet insurance cover is worthwhile for your family, Everypaw has put together everything you need to know in an easy-to-understand guide.
Do I Need Pet Insurance?
Having pet insurance isn’t a legal requirement in the UK, making it a really important decision for animal owners to make.
If you’re undecided on whether pet insurance will be a good value investment, consider what the alternative costs could be. Should anything happen to your pet, you could be faced with handling an unexpected and potentially hefty bill that comes with medical treatment for your furry companion.
These unpredictable costs vary greatly depending on the type of treatment required and your geographical location. For cats, dogs and rabbits, it's not uncommon for the expenses to reach into hundreds or even thousands of pounds. For example, according to the Association of British Insurers, treatment for arthritis in a dog can cost over £2,000; and if your cat suffers diabetes this typically costs £1,000. While claims for spinal surgery can range between £8,000 and £10,000.
Weighing the financial burden of covering veterinary expenses out of pocket against the recurring expenses of pet insurance premiums is an important, and sometimes tricky, decision. This choice is crucial as it significantly influences the decision on whether pet insurance is a suitable option for you.
With the cost of living rising, it can be tempting not to invest in the ‘what if’ of pet insurance, however, you’ll need to clearly understand the pros and cons of a monthly premium before making any decisions.
Pet Insurance vs Self-Funding Care
For example, getting Lifetime coverage with Everypaw for your dog with a vet fees of up to £5,000 and an excess of £110 per condition, per year, could cost as little as £10.77 per month or £129.24 per year. For cats with a Lifetime policy could only cost £7.32 per month or £87.84 per year.*
Hopefully, the coverage the policy includes is something you’d never need to use - but if you opt for pet insurance, the coverage of up to £5,000 vs having to self-fund treatment of that cost provides peace of mind for your beloved companion as well as for your finances.
*Prices are based on the premiums paid by at least 10% of customers who bought a Lifetime £5K policy between 1 January 2023 and 31 October 2023.
What Can Impact the Cost and Value of Pet Insurance?
All pets are different, meaning there are quite a range of factors that can influence the cost and overall value of getting insurance coverage.
The age of your pet when you take out a policy will have an impact on your overall costs. If your pet is older, coverage will cost more than it would if you got coverage when they were younger. This is due to the associated higher health risks that older animals face.
The species and breed of your pet plays a significant role in what kind of pet insurance options are available to you. Insurance for cats, dogs and rabbits is quite common, with plenty of levels of care and types of policy available. However, some breeds are more susceptible to certain conditions, that's why it's good to understand the potential health needs of your pet when considering if pet insurance is worth it.
If you’ve got smaller animals in your family, weighing up the value of pet insurance is different due to their tendency to have shorter lifespans. More exotic pets like reptiles or birds often have lengthy lifespans, but finding an insurance company could potentially prove challenging, and they may require a specialist policy.
Two key risk factors that can impact insurance policy costs are susceptibility to certain conditions and diseases due to breed, and the likelihood of being stolen.
Certain breeds like dachshunds are well known to suffer from intervertebral disc disease due to their long backs and this will factor into the cost of insuring one. It is important to balance this slightly higher cost of insurance premium against the average cost of surgery and rehabilitation for this condition which can cost thousands and thousands of pounds, taking into account the cost of an MRI and potential surgery.
More desirable and fashionable breeds that are unfortunately more likely to be stolen can be more costly to insure than a mixed breed.
What's Covered by an Everypaw Lifetime Policy
Everypaw's Lifetime Insurance is available with a range of cover levels, all the way up to £10,000*. Vet fees are not the only things that can be covered by pet insurance, we offer a range of additional benefits that can help when you need it most.
Lifetime Pet Insurance
Cats, Dogs & Rabbits
Vet Fees
Dental Treatment
Complementary Treatment
Physiotherapy
Finding Your Pet
Hospitalisation Boarding Fees
Petcall
Pet Portal
Cats & Dogs
Loss by Theft or Straying
Death from Illness
Death from Accident
Dogs only
Third Party Liability
What Types of Pet Insurance are Available?
If you’ve never insured a pet before, the amount of options available can be overwhelming. There are plenty of policies that offer a good amount of protection for your pets, but there are also a lot of seemingly cheaper options that might not provide adequate coverage. You’ll only find Lifetime Pet Insurance at everypaw.com as we believe in keeping things simple with a great level of care - but other options are available.
Lifetime Pet Insurance, offered by Everypaw, is the most comprehensive category of pet insurance as it covers your pet for accidents, injuries and illnesses throughout its life, with certain policy limits. The fixed amount of coverage resets upon the annual renewal of your policy.
This kind of coverage allows you to claim up to a set amount for each condition without a time restriction, covering both illnesses and accidents on a per condition basis. Once the vet fee limit is reached, you would not be able to claim for that condition again.
Everypaw only offer Maximum Benefit Pet Insurance through price comparison websites.
This type of policy offers protection for both accidents and illnesses on a per condition basis. Coverage is only available for up to 12 months or until the vet fee limit has been used. Once the limit has been reached, you would not be able to claim for that condition again.
Everypaw only offer Time Limited Pet Insurance through price comparison websites.
This type of cover is designed to cover vet fees and complications if your pet has an accident. It does not cover ongoing illnesses.
Everypaw do not offer Accident Only Pet Insurance.
What Age is Best to Get Pet Insurance?
As with all insurance policies, initial pet insurance premiums increase with risk. Insuring your pet when they’re young and healthy is always the cheapest time to get coverage. Not only are the risks and costs lower, but it means your furry friend is covered from the off, which greatly decreases the chances of pre-existing conditions becoming an issue. This means that when a new issue does occur, it will most likely be covered by your policy rather than it being a pre-existing condition that isn’t.
At What Point is Pet Insurance Not Worth It?
If you’ve got a family pet who has already been treasured for a few years, you might need to consider the value of pet insurance more carefully. Older pets are naturally more likely to have acquired pre-existing conditions in comparison to young pups, kittens and bunnies, and these conditions are unlikely to be covered when moving providers.
The health risks faced by older animals are also materially higher, which means that the cost of insurance premiums rises with each of your pet’s birthdays. In terms of finances, it is impossible to put a value on the potentially life-saving treatment of a beloved pet, but the overall value of an insurance premium for older animals has to be weighed carefully against the cost of self-funding, expected lifespan and most importantly, quality of life.
Do Vets Charge More If You Have Pet Insurance?
A common misconception is that pet insurance can lead to inflated veterinary bills. This isn’t the case, with vet practices charging a fair price for treatment regardless of the level of coverage an animal might have. The only difference you’ll find with costs when you have insurance for your pet vs self-funding is that your policy will cover up to the cost of your vet fees limit - providing the treatment and condition is covered.
Find out more about coverage with Everypaw’s easy-to-understand pet insurance guides. You can also find out everything you need to know about training, nutrition and more, over at All Things Pet.