Best cat insurance in the UK

Hi all,

I'm just about to renew Villy's insurance and was wondering if anyone knew which insurerers are the best?

I'm considering Petplan at the moment, I'm with Tesco, but hey will only pay for any illness for 12 months, whereas Petplan will pay for it for life.

I'm with petplan and have had no problem on the other hand I have not had to claim yet. *knocks on wood*

Hi,
I'm with petplan as well. I like it because the cover is the best I could find and they are the only company our vets will claim direct from, so you don't have to pay the whole lot up front.
Where abouts in Essex are you? I live in Brentwood.
Anne

Petplan has a really good name

I'm with Sainsbury's - I didn't have a lot of choice though as I was insuring a 10 year old. It is £6500 per condition rather than per year though, so maybe not the best for a younger cat. M & S seems to have a good name as well. Petplan does have a good name, but you need to check things like the limit, and if it is per condition or per year - if you have a young cat, I think per year might be the best way to go. M & S also offer no excess if your cat is under a certain age. I went on something like Motley Fool and just got it to search for the insurance companies and then weighed them all up.

Our girls are insured with PetPlan. PetPal Direct provide the same type of cover as PetPlan but the monies they pay out is slightly less than PetPlan.

Thanks for the info, I went with Petplan. Villy is 8, and apparently petplan don't take on new customers with cats older than 8, so it was now or never!

Anyone else have problems insuring older cats, or finding the costs sky high?

I think you will find that insuring an older car is always going to be a lot more expensive because the likelihood of you making a claim is going to be higher than if you had a younger cat.

From personal experience, it is better to be insured than not. My previous cat, Mittens was insured via a company policy up til 2001 when my husband worked for Enron. After the company went bust, we contacted the pet insurers to offer to pay for the insurance privately only to discover that the insurance premiums that had been deducted fromy my husband's salary for the past 12 months had never made it to the insurer's so the policy was already well and truly void. We were unable to insure Mittens with any company from that point on also because by then, she was 11 years old

In her final year, we paid in excess of £5000 in vet fees to treat her diabetes and for ultrasounds, urine and bloodwork when she was diagnosed with cancer. Now, even if we had been able to find a company willing to insure her aged 11 years and we had to pay £10 per month in premiums, we would still have been better off financially. We were lucky in that we were able to afford Mittens' treatment and even with the benefit of hindsight, if we had to do this all over again, we would still have paid for the treatment because she had a good quality of life until the end.

We found Petplans cover to be far worse than most other insurers. There limits were lower on what you could claim in a year. We're with Direct line who have quite high limits and the one time we have claimed they have been fantastic. I have also heard that the ne Marks and Spencers Insurance is really good

Well, I have had to speak to the insurance company this week about Pebbles, as the vet is considering sending her to a specialist. turns out that as she is over 9, my excess is £50 until the costs for one condition hit £330, then 15% will be greater, so they will adjust it so I pay 15% of the total costs, and from what I understood, this will continue for the length of the claim. I am still glad she is insured (although Ginger isn't it would have been £14+ a month to insure him, and I would have still had to pay for his vaccs and blood tests).