What to Check When Your Pet Insurance Renews

Key things to know

1. Renewal prices rise mainly because of your pet’s age, rising vet fees and claims history, even if you have made no claim.
2. Insurers can change policy terms at renewal, so check the policy type, vet fee limit, excess and any percentage contribution, not just the price.
3. New policies exclude pre-existing conditions, so pets with ongoing conditions are hard to move, and many owners stay put to keep their cover unbroken.
4. Dogs often count as senior from around seven or eight years old, and rising age-related risk pushes premiums up year after year.
5. Compare last year’s documents with this year’s line by line and ask the insurer in writing to list every change.

Pet insurance renewal notices usually arrive with a new price attached and little explanation of anything else. For pets, the paperwork deserves more attention than for most types of insurance, because the terms can change at renewal as well as the price, and a pet with a medical history becomes difficult to move to another insurer. Reading the documents properly before the renewal date is the most reliable way to know what you would actually be buying for the coming year. This checklist covers the points that catch owners out most often.

Check Whether the Policy Type Has Changed

Insurers can restructure a policy at renewal, not only reprice it. A policy bought as one type can end up behaving like another if you only ever read the letter and never the wording. Work through these checks:

• Find the policy type in the documents. Lifetime, maximum benefit, time limited and accident only policies behave very differently over a pet’s life, and the name on the renewal letter is not always a reliable guide. Our guide to what lifetime pet cover is explains how the four types differ.
• Check how the vet fee limit behaves, not just its size. An annual limit that refills each year and a fixed pot per condition can look similar on a price list, then diverge sharply once a condition runs into a second year.
• Ask for changes in writing. If the renewal letter mentions new terms, ask the insurer to confirm exactly what has changed since last year and request the full policy wording rather than a summary.

Check the Vet Fee Limit and How It Resets

The vet fee limit decides how much the insurer will pay towards treatment, so a change here matters more than almost anything else in the renewal pack.

• Compare the limit with last year’s figure. A lower limit means you carry more of any large vet bill yourself.
• Check whether the limit resets each policy year for conditions already claimed. On a lifetime policy it should refill; on other types it may not.
• Look for sub-limits. Some policies cap what they will pay for particular conditions or treatments within the overall limit, so the headline figure overstates the cover that actually applies.
• Check whether illness cover is capped by time as well as money. A time-limited policy stops paying for a condition once the period ends, even if the money has not run out.
• Note the excess, which is the amount deducted from each claim before the insurer pays. Some excesses have more than one part, and our explanation of compulsory and voluntary excess sets out how they are built.

Check for a Percentage Contribution or Co-Payment

Some policies require you to pay a percentage of each claim on top of the excess. These contributions can appear or change at renewal, and on large bills they add up quickly. Reviews of pet insurers describe owners whose terms were changed so that they had to pay 20% of every claim, on top of a steep price rise; for one owner of two cats, the combined cost of both policies was heading towards £3,000 a year.

• Search the documents for a percentage contribution, sometimes described as a co-payment or co-insurance.
• Check which claims it applies to. A contribution can apply to every claim or only to some.
• Check whether the percentage can change at renewal. Policy terms, like prices, can be revised by the insurer.
• Do the arithmetic before you accept it. The higher the percentage and the larger the vet bill, the more of the cost you carry yourself, so work out what a typical claim would leave you paying.

Worth doing: Ask the insurer, in writing, to list every change made to your policy since last year. You are entitled to know what you are being asked to renew, and a written list is much easier to check against the documents.

Check the Exclusions Added Since Last Year

Exclusions are the conditions and treatments the policy will not pay for. New ones can appear at renewal, and they rarely get a prominent mention in the letter.

• Compare the exclusions section with last year’s wording, page by page if you still have it.
• Check the list of excluded conditions against your pet’s medical history. Anything your pet has already been treated for is likely to be excluded under a new policy, so confirm how your current one treats it.
• Ask the insurer to confirm in writing that no new exclusions have been added if the documents do not make it clear.
• Trust the documents rather than the marketing. The policy wording and your individual schedule are the true record of what is covered.

Check How Your Premium Has Moved and Why

Each renewal, the insurer builds a fresh price from details about your pet and from what is happening across the market as a whole, so a premium can rise even when you have made no claim at all. The usual reasons are worth knowing, because they tell you whether an increase reflects your own pet or the wider market.

Reason	What it means
Your pet’s age	The likelihood of illness rises as pets get older, so premiums usually rise with it. Dogs are often classed as senior at about seven or eight, depending on breed.
Rising vet fees	Advances in veterinary medicine, such as MRI scans that were once rare but are now routine, bring better treatment at higher cost, and insurers pass some of that on.
Claims history	A one-off accident or short illness may have little effect on your price, but a long-term condition needing ongoing treatment is more likely to push it up.
Age bands	Some insurers price within age bands, so the cost can jump more noticeably when your pet reaches certain ages rather than edging up each year.
Pooling risk	Premiums across all policyholders fund claims. If the overall cost of claims rises, through higher vet fees or something like a viral outbreak, prices tend to follow.

Breed and where you live also play a part. Age shifts risk in ways that can be measured: reported skin conditions affect roughly 7% of puppies but 37% of dogs in their senior years, which is one reason an older pet costs more to cover even with a clean claims record.

It is also fair to ask how much explanation you are owed. A petition has asked the Financial Conduct Authority to make pet insurers give clear, fair reasons for large renewal price rises, which tells you something about how thin the current requirements are in this part of the market. The rules that do apply to insurance renewals more widely are set out in our guide to what the FCA pricing rules mean for you.

Check What Happens to Pre-Existing Conditions If You Switch

This is the check that decides whether staying put is genuinely a choice or the only realistic option.

• List every condition your pet has been treated for, including minor ones. Insurers ask about these when you request a quote, and incomplete answers give them grounds to refuse claims later.
• Assume a new insurer will exclude anything already diagnosed or treated. If your pet has an existing medical history, a new policy will rarely match the cover you have now, because fresh policies leave out conditions that already exist.
• Understand why so many owners stay. Plenty of owners keep their existing policy running without a break, which can leave them absorbing steep price rises year after year rather than giving up cover for the conditions their pet already has.
• Weigh the trade-off honestly. Moving a young, healthy pet may be straightforward; moving a pet with ongoing conditions usually means giving up cover for those conditions, so compare that cost against the renewal increase rather than the headline price alone.

Check the Claim Process Before You Need It

The moment to learn how claims work is while nothing is wrong with your pet.

• Find out who submits the claim. Some vets handle the paperwork directly with the insurer while you confirm details; others ask you to pay and reclaim.
• Check how the excess applies, whether per claim, per condition or per policy year, because this affects what you actually receive on a payout.
• Check the deadlines and the paperwork. Note what documentation the insurer needs and how quickly you must tell them about a course of treatment.
• Read the steps in advance. Our walkthrough of how to make an insurance claim sets out the process step by step, so nothing about it is unfamiliar when the day comes.

Before your renewal date passes, put last year’s policy documents alongside this year’s, write down every difference you find, and use that list to decide whether to stay with your current insurer or look elsewhere.

Questions answered

Why did my pet insurance go up when I have not claimed?
Insurers build a new price at each renewal from your pet’s details and from wider market conditions. Your pet’s rising age, higher vet costs and the overall cost of claims across all policyholders all push prices up, whether or not you have claimed.

Can I switch pet insurance if my pet has a medical condition?
You can apply, but new policies exclude pre-existing conditions, so anything already diagnosed or treated is unlikely to be covered. This is why many owners stay with their current policy rather than risk losing cover for ongoing conditions.

What is a co-payment on pet insurance?
It is a percentage of each claim that you pay yourself, on top of any excess. Check your documents carefully, because contributions can be introduced or changed at renewal.

Do claims always raise my renewal price?
Not automatically. A one-off accident or short illness may have little effect, but a long-term condition needing ongoing treatment is more likely to increase your premium.