SAINSBURY’S pet insurance policyholders could be left thousands of pounds out of pocket through not reading the small print, warns Animal Friends founder Elaine Fairfax.

Animal Friends applauds Sainsbury’s “Pet Insurance Charter” but questions whether it fails to champion best of breed policies in favour of its own.

Sainsbury’s press release dated 27 April 2005: “Sainsbury’s Bank has developed a Pet Insurance Charter, outlining the minimum level of cover it believes a policy should provide for dogs and cats. This includes items such as cover for treatments extending longer than 12 months and for vet fees in excess of £3,500”.

Elaine Fairfax, Animal Friends comments: “Any step to clarify insurance cover for consumers is a step to be commended. Therefore we applaud and support the concept of a Pet Insurance Charter - although an independent body would undoubtedly be better qualified to administer it?”
“That said, I believe the product criteria selected is not robust enough. What are Sainsbury’s policyholders to do when the condition their pet suffers from requires treatment which exceeds the headline grabbing figures over a number of year?”

“What Sainsbury’s fails to include in its Charter is that there are policies, some cheaper than its own, which offer cover per year, per condition. I.E. policies which offer cover for the lifetime of the pet and the lifetime of each condition. This is true ‘Lifetime’ cover”.

Animal Friends challenges Sainsbury’s and other pet insurance providers to offer true Lifetime cover, i.e. per condition, per year.

Mystery shopping at Sainsbury’s

A five year old Golden Retriever in Worthing would cost £20.70 a month or £1,242 over a five year period. If that Retriever had an ongoing condition for that five year period, Sainsbury’s would offer up to £6,500 for that condition.

The same dog, same postcode with Animal Friends would cost £13.99 for Gold Super Cover. But over that five year period you would have up to £20,000 for that ongoing condition and over the same period you would have saved £402.06 in premium against Sainsbury’s.

Lifetime cover example

Sainsbury’s policy is not a true ‘Lifetime’ policy; it is a hybrid. It offers “up to” £6,500 for any one condition. Therefore, if that condition is an ongoing one, Sainsbury’s would pay “up to” £6,500, however long it took. But it would not pay more if the condition persisted beyond this financial limit.

If someone took out an Animal Friends Gold Super policy, a true Lifetime policy, they would have £4,000 for each condition each year. So if a condition needed treating for five years they would have “up to” £20,000 for that condition.

Lifetime cover definition

• Most policies will cover a condition for up to a year but will then exclude it from the cover for subsequent years. Obviously it is very difficult to get cover once the condition is ‘existing’. An example: your dog is diagnosed as having a heart condition at the age of two. This means that it will need medication for the rest of his life, which might be another ten years.

• Some policies offer a fixed amount (e.g. £3,000) per year however this is for all conditions. Using the example above, if the dog also contracts gastric problems in addition to the heart problems then the cost may well exceed the £3,000 each year.

• Other policies offer a fixed amount (e.g. £5,000) per condition however, this will not cover every year. Again using the example above, this would not cover heart condition medication for the rest of the dog’s life.

• Genuine lifetime cover will offer a fixed amount (e.g. £4,000) per condition, per year. Using the example above, the owner would be covered for treatment for all conditions, every year for the rest of the dog’s life, up to the agreed amount each year for each condition.