Like most types of insurance, the premiums for pet cover have suffered a good dose of nasty inflation in recent years.
Bad news for a majority of this country’s 16 million people who rely upon these policies to meet vets’ bills.
Although average annual premiums do not look too steep – Compare The Market says they stand at £76 for cats and £137 for dogs – prices vary enormously.
This is a result of different types of cover being available, ranging from cheap ‘accident only’ through to pricey ‘lifetime’ policies.
In addition, age (old age, that is) and pedigree (mixed breeds are cheaper to insure) ratchet up premiums.
Insurance costs are also rising as a result of soaring bills from vets – currently being investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority – while we must not forget that each policy attracts an insurance premium tax charge of 12 per cent, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves is able to use to keep funding generous public sector pay awards.
Ruff treatment: Patrick Derrane and his wife Clare with their schnoodle Ted
What makes life difficult for many pet owners is that they are often prevented from shopping around for cover at renewal because their furry friend has an ongoing medical issue that a new insurer would not cover. In effect, they are trapped and at the mercy of profit-seeking insurers.
For some owners, cover has become so expensive that they have dispensed with it. A few have reluctantly sought new homes for their pets.
Among those who have taken a break from insuring her beloved dog as a result of rising premiums is London-based Kath Rooney, a retired personnel executive.
Two years ago she contacted me after the annual premium for insuring her delightful miniature pinscher Ellie jumped by 24 per cent to £667. It meant the cover cost more than both her home and motor insurance. She persevered with the insurance.
Last year the annual premium for Ellie, a rescue dog, increased by nearly 18 per cent to £786. But this year Kath thought her insurer was taking the (dog) biscuit. It wanted to push up the price of cover for nine-year-old Ellie by 31 per cent to £1,028. Kath decided not to renew.
‘Miniature pinschers can live until 15 or 16,’ Kath told me.
‘Ellie is in rude good health, and I have never had to make a claim on the insurance. It’s almost as if the insurer has plucked the number 31 out of the sky. It’s borderline rapacious.’
Shopping around did not help, with rival insurers charging about the same amount.
Kath has also hunted high and low for tailored cover that would specifically protect her financially in the event of Ellie requiring expensive medical care – maybe as a result of an accident or a cancer diagnosis – but she has had no joy. Ellie is currently not insured.
Patrick Derrane, a 49-year-old London cabbie from Banstead in Surrey, has also just cancelled cover for Ted, his nine-year-old schnoodle – a mix of schnauzer and poodle.
In Patrick’s case it was not because of cost – the monthly premium was an affordable £12.10 – but a result of the insurer refusing to meet a claim after Ted was hit by a car in January.
The incident happened when Patrick took Ted for his regular walk at their local park. He let him off the lead so that Ted could do what he loves most – chasing after a ball and then bringing it back to him.
‘He couldn’t find it,’ explains Patrick, who is married to 46-year-old nurse Clare. ‘But it seems that in scrambling around for the ball, Ted picked up the scent of another animal and ran out of the park.
‘I chased after him, only to hear him yelping after being clipped by a car.’
Not being able to put any weight on his right hind leg, Ted was taken to a local vet where he was examined and X-rayed. Thankfully, nothing was broken and within 24 hours he was jumping on to his back legs without pain.
The vet’s bills came to just over £1,000, and Patrick duly filled in a claim form, expecting it would be paid minus the 15 per cent policy excess. But he was wrong.
Although he had not violated the Road Traffic Act 1988, which states that a dog must be on a lead when walked on a road, the insurer said that Patrick had failed to take ‘proper care and attention to prevent the accident’.
This condition is spelt out in the policy documents but not in the information document that the insurer provides on its branded ‘essential’ policy.
In other words, the insurer says Patrick was wrong to let Ted off the lead in the public park, which he has used to exercise the dog most days for the past nine years without incident. Indeed, most of Patrick’s fellow dog-walkers also let their pets off the lead.
Patrick has been left bemused by the insurer’s decision – and he has had to pay the vet’s bill himself.
He told me: ‘I’ve cancelled the policy because I am not prepared to give the insurer another penny of my hard-earned money for cover that isn’t worth the paper it is written on.’
Reeves’s Isa grab won’t drive investing
Over recent weeks we have been urging Chancellor Rachel Reeves to get her ‘hands off our cash Isas’.
Although we have had success in ensuring our existing cash Isas will not be disbanded, it now looks a blinding certainty that the £20,000 cash Isa allowance will be pared back in an attempt to get more people using their Isas to invest. An annual cash Isa limit of £4,000, coming in from April next year, now looks like the bookies’ favourite.
Savers in her sights: Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being urged to get her ‘hands off our cash Isas’
Yet opposition to such a cut is widespread – among readers (thank you for all your emails) as well as banks and building societies, which use cash deposits from Isas to fund their lending to homebuyers.
The latest society boss to back our ‘hands off our cash Isas’ campaign is Richard Fearon, chief executive of Leeds Building Society. He told me: ‘Significantly reducing the cash Isa annual allowance – or worse still scrapping cash Isas altogether – is unlikely to create greater investment in the UK and will instead lead to bigger tax bills for savers and higher repayments for mortgage holders.’
He added: ‘We’ve written to the Chancellor to reinforce our concerns, not least of which is the impact on our ability to support aspiring homeowners as we use Isa deposits to fuel our mortgage lending.’
David Postings, boss of trade association UK Finance, has also backed our campaign. He told me: ‘Reducing the cash Isa limit doesn’t seem the right approach – and it’s not clear it would drive significantly more investment into equities, let alone UK equities. Getting more people investing is right but we need to do it in a positive way.’
With the Building Societies Association plus Coventry, Darlington, Nationwide, Scottish and Skipton (all building societies) having already backed our campaign, the message is clear to Ms Reeves: ‘Hands off our cash Isas.’
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