Pet Insurance

[Tempus Fugit]

The way insurance works is that a many people contribute to a pot of money (premiums) from which hopefully  fewer people make lower claims from the money pot than what goes in. Up until last year, most of our premiums were going to Allianz, as underwriters for Petplan. Then Petplan decided to change underwriter to the Lloyds MS Amlin syndicate. My guess is that Amjlin saw us people with middle-aged dogs as a high risk and since they hadn't been getting premiums from us from when we first took out the policies (they were pocketed by Allianz) they have sent us a price signal that we should either get off their books or pay a catch-up premium so that we end up paying them what we would have paid them had they been the underwriters from the time we first took out the policies.

 

For me, I decided to get off their books and take out insurance with a competitor since not only was I faced with a doubling of my premium but Petplan/ Amlin have also introduced  an age related co-payment on top of the normal excess that kicks in once the dog reaches 8 years old. I realise I will have wear the pre-existing conditions with the new insurer but hopefully the premiums will stay low enough that I can at least partially self insure but at least have some insurance for accidents.