Pet Insurance

The article on Pet Insurance advises people to start with quotes from Moneysupermarket to get a feel for the market. Moneysupermarket invariably throws up E&L and Animal Friends (underwritten by E&L) as the bulk of the recommended/cheapest options. Although there are other adverts on the results page for M&S, Tesco, etc, they are not included in the actual results (Argos, and occasionally RSPCA are).

E&L policies are cheap for a reason (I won't comment further on their reputation but a quick internet search will tell you all you need to know).

Using those premiums as a guide gives people a completely distorted view of the market, and make the better quality policies look extortionate.

With Pet Insurance you generally do get what you pay for, and a policy that doesn't pay out is a waste of money, no matter how cheap it is. So in this case Moneysupermarket is not a good place to start.

Also Marks and Spencer have introduced some very sharp practices recently. They have massively increased their premiums over the last 2 years, and now they have removed the no excess option, even for existing policy holders (upon renewal).

As people are tied to an insurer once they have made a claim, there is little that they can do. It's dissapointing to see a firm like M&S behaving like this.

It would be helpful if the article could reflect these problems, or at least suggest some ways that people could do some research on their chosen insurer (and underwriter) before committing to a policy.

Finally (I promise!) NFU seem to be getting good reviews from pet owners, but they don't seem very well known. So perhaps they could get a mention too.