Lifetime pet insurance

If you purchase lifetime cover for your pet, you’ll get the following benefits:

Your pet will be covered if they develop chronic conditions – such as arthritis or diabetes – as long as you renew after you’ve claimed for the condition.

You could be protected from the cost of ongoing vet treatment  – which can run to thousands of pounds each year.

Your pet will be covered for hereditary conditions – as well as behavioural and complementary treatments, depending on your vet’s recommendation. This is why this type of cover is worth considering for pedigree cats and pedigree dogs, who are more prone to hereditary conditions.

Lifetime cover isn’t the right pet insurance policy for everyone. Downsides include:

• Premiums for lifetime pet cover can be high compared to time limited or maximum benefit polices.
• Once you pass your pre-set cost limit, you’ll have to pay the rest.
• You have to stay with the same insurance provider year on year to benefit.

As well as lifetime cover, you have three other pet insurance options:

• Accident only pet insurance. This covers your pet for accidents, but not illnesses.
• Time limited pet insurance. This will pay vet fees for a year from when your pet develops a condition, or until the policy money to treat the condition is used up – whichever occurs first. Once that happens, you’ll have to pay the costs for the condition, whether you renew or not.
• Maximum benefit pet insurance. It protects your pet from illnesses and accidents up to a maximum amount per condition. It doesn’t provide ongoing cover. That means you’ll have to cover the costs for the condition once the maximum amount is used up, whether you renew or not.

Lifetime pet insurance is commonly offered for dogs, cats and rabbits, but here at Compare the Market we only offer cover for dogs and cats. Specialist insurance providers may offer cover for other type of pets.

You can claim for the same condition each year, but the way this works depends on what type of lifetime pet insurance you have. Some policies set an overall limit for what you can claim for in a year, and some set an annual limit per condition, so you can claim for that condition only up to a certain amount. If, for example, your cat’s diabetes treatment cost £6,000 in a year and your cover limit was £5,000, you’d have to pay £1,000 yourself. But the following year, your limit would again be £5,000, provided you renewed the policy.

Policies may have age limits and age-related exclusions, so check carefully. Lifetime pet insurance can be very suitable for older pets as it offers so much cover, but insuring an older animal can be expensive. Usually it’s considered best practice to get lifetime pet insurance when your pet is young and hasn’t yet developed any conditions. That’s because most pet insurance policies won’t cover these.

Pet insurance doesn’t generally cover conditions your pet had before you took out the policy. If your policy does, the cover will be very limited. Some policies may cover what’s called ‘historic conditions’. These are conditions that your pet hasn’t had any symptoms of, or treatment for, for a certain amount of time. The exact conditions will be specified in the policy.