9 tips for choosing pet insurance

Check how much your premium will increase as your pet ages

Consumer group, CHOICE has 9 tips for choosing pet insurance following their latest review of policies.

CHOICE explains in their Pet Insurance Buying Guide that health insurance for pets is still a relatively new product. In Australia, there are only two providers of pet insurance – Petplan and PetSure, underwritten by Allianz Australia and Hollard respectively. Between them they administer over 60 policies for 19 brands.

The policies in CHOICE’s latest review are either basic accident-only cover or more comprehensive accident-and-illness cover (and one that is illness-only). While these cover surgery, hospitalisation and medicines, in many cases dental care, vaccinations and preventative treatment isn’t included. For those you might need to add routine care, sometimes called wellness care.

Like human health insurance, the customer can be charged either an excess or a co-payment, or both. The excess is the cost of making a claim, which you might pay once for each condition, each year. In the case of a co-payment the insurer splits the vet bill with you. Depending on the co-pay level, customers can pay up to 35% of the overall bill.

Because different policies offer different levels of cover, it can be difficult to figure out which one gives you value for money. To make it easier for you, in CHOICE’s pet insurance reviews they have levelled the playing field by calculating roughly how much cover you get for each dollar of premiums. But remember: although a policy may be great value, it needs to have the features and cover that best suit your needs.