How to Get Cheaper Pet Insurance

There’s a right way and a wrong way to make pet insurance cheaper. The wrong way is quietly downgrading to a policy that won’t be there when it matters, which saves pounds now and costs a fortune later. The right way is keeping the cover that counts and trimming everything else, and there’s more trimming available than most people realise.

Here’s the smart list, in the order we’d work through it.

Shop wider than one comparison site

Comparison sites are genuinely useful for building a shortlist, but no single site covers the whole market, and some insurers don’t appear on any of them at all. Run quotes through at least two comparison sites, then go directly to a couple of insurers that only sell direct. Half an hour of this regularly beats the first price you saw, and there’s a table of the sites worth using in the comparison guide.

One habit to keep for life: never auto-renew without checking. Loyalty rarely gets rewarded in insurance pricing, and a quick requote at renewal keeps your insurer honest. The one exception is important, though. If your pet has developed a condition on a lifetime policy, staying put is usually worth far more than any switching saving, for the reasons in pre-existing conditions.

Pay annually if you can

Many insurers charge interest when you spread the premium over monthly payments, and it can add a meaningful percentage to the year’s cost. If your budget allows one annual payment, compare both prices and take the cheaper. If monthly is what works for your cash flow, that’s a perfectly good reason to pay monthly, just make it a choice rather than a default.

Set the excess like you mean it

The excess is the part of each claim you pay yourself, and raising the voluntary excess lowers the premium. The test is simple. Pick the highest excess you could pay tomorrow without it hurting, and stop there. An excess you couldn’t actually afford isn’t a saving, it’s a smaller version of being uninsured.

While you’re on that page of the quote, check for a co-payment percentage at older ages, which is a different thing entirely and worth knowing about before it applies. The comparison guide covers it properly.

Use multi-pet discounts

If you’ve more than one animal, most insurers will cover them on one policy and discount each additional pet. It’s often a genuine saving and it simplifies your renewals into one date. Check the combined price against the best separate policies before committing, because the discount doesn’t always win. There’s a full guide to multi-pet insurance.

Keep the risk down at home

Insurers price on risk, and some of that risk is in your hands. Keeping your pet vaccinated, at a healthy weight and microchipped keeps you on the right side of policy conditions, and a leaner, fitter pet genuinely claims less over a lifetime. The dog health library is full of ways to keep the vet visits routine rather than dramatic.

The savings to refuse

Two “savings” cost more than they save. Dropping from lifetime cover to a cheaper type usually swaps real protection for the appearance of it, and lifetime vs annual shows exactly where the cheap types give way. And letting a policy lapse to save a month or two of premium resets your pet’s history to pre-existing, which can never be undone.

Do the sensible list above and skip these two, and you’ll have a lean premium on cover that still does its one big job.

Bertie explains insurance, it doesn’t sell it or advise on it. For a recommendation on a specific policy, speak to an authorised adviser or broker.