My dogs insurance renewal has increased by £2000

elsien

GrubbyGirl_2 said:

elsien said:

The only other option for 3K is to self- insure and just get basic third-party cover. 

I would normally have stopped ensuring mine by now except the cost of his medication just about makes it worth keeping him insured 

Have you looked at how much it would cost to just get a prescription and buy online?  My dog is on meds that cost £38 for a 30ml bottle that lasts 20 days so £342 for just under 8 months. I can get a 100ml bottle for £23 including postage so that's £62 for 6 months plus a prescription of £17.  It saves me £263 every 6 months or £526 a year just on meds

Monthly injection and I’m not up for injecting him myself. 

Lottie83

TELLIT01 said:

The claim insurers make of "Guaranteed Lifetime Cover" isn't worth the paper it's written on.  Yes they will continue to provide cover but at a price that is not affordable.  They don't cancel the cover, the pet owner does.

Absolutely agree! 

Lottie83

sheramber said:

Many breed people use Petplan or Agria as they do not increase premiums  if you claim.

They do have higher premiums in the first place , and they do add increases due to increased costs each year.  But whether you claim or not your premium is the same. 

Those who don’t claim subsidise those who do. 

Breed, age and postcode( this indicates the level vet fees ) as well as medical history all affect the premium. 

Petplan  paid out more for me than I paid in premiums. 

For another dog, with a different company, it took 10 years of premiums for me to pay back what the insurance company paid out for the one claim I made. 

My friend insures his dog with Petplan. Same breed and similar age. 

His premium is now at £3800! 

Tesco have paid out more than I have paid in, for which I am thankful. I just don’t agree that a £2000 increase is reasonable. 

MyRealNameToo

Your premium is £3.226.50, the rest is insurance premium tax which the insurer hands straight over to HMRC. 

Given inflation on vet prices they are still writing your policy as a probable loss given the claimed values are approximately the net premiums but that premium has to pay much more than simply the vets bill. Which other companies can you name that sell stuff to customers knowing its loss making? 

In commercial insurance you'd do it the other way round, you'd reduce the premium and thus IPT, risk margin, profit margin etc but have an aggregate deductible inline with your anticipated annual losses therefore you pay for a standard year yourself and the insurer picks up the delta in the bad years. 

If the premiums are gong to be more than the meds are then look at what you can get from other providers who'll exclude these conditions 

sheramber

Lottie83 said:

sheramber said:

Many breed people use Petplan or Agria as they do not increase premiums  if you claim.

They do have higher premiums in the first place , and they do add increases due to increased costs each year.  But whether you claim or not your premium is the same. 

Those who don’t claim subsidise those who do. 

Breed, age and postcode( this indicates the level vet fees ) as well as medical history all affect the premium. 

Petplan  paid out more for me than I paid in premiums. 

For another dog, with a different company, it took 10 years of premiums for me to pay back what the insurance company paid out for the one claim I made. 

My friend insures his dog with Petplan. Same breed and similar age. 

His premium is now at £3800! 

Tesco have paid out more than I have paid in, for which I am thankful. I just don’t agree that a £2000 increase is reasonable. 

Similar age is not the same as exactly the same
Does he live in the same postcode and use the same vet?

These all affect your premium.

I don’t think Tesco’s underwriter will consider whether you consider it reasonable or not.

It is your choice whether to continue with the insurance or not.

I have dogs insured and others I reduced the level of  cover and put extra away in a savings account for higher bills, if needed.  I didn’t .

Others I stopped the insurance when I considered the premium was too much compared with what I had claimed.
This particularly applied with older dogs when premiums are hiked as older dogs generally result in more claims. 

Lottie83

Having now spoken to Tesco, it appears a change of underwriters is the explanation. 

Royal Sun Alliance were the underwriters until this year. The underwriter is now Pinnacle. 

Looking back at the renewal cost of each year, the first year increased by 88%. Every other year, up until 2024, has increased between 30%-35%. 

In 2024, I moved to a different county. When I contacted Tesco last September, they advised my premium had decreased and I was owed £70. Last years renewal increase was only 2%. This is backed up by my vet costs being significantly cheaper since moving. 

The amount I claimed each year made no change to the increase, it remained between 30%-35% regardless. 

So therefore, had Tesco not changed underwriters, it is reasonable to believe that my renewal would have risen between 30%-40%, in line with every year (bar the first year). 

I believe it is highly unlikely the increase would have been 118%, which is what it is with Pinnacle as the underwriter. 

I would welcome any thoughts. 

MyRealNameToo

Tesco's pet insurance is a wholly outsourced operation, they are basically an introducer and licence their brand name to others to provide the whole thing. As you say they have recently switched providers hence your previous policies would have been priced by RSA and your policy is now being priced by Pinnacle. Inevitably two different companies have two different pricing policies. 

These deals are typically for about 5 years and are retendered before the renewal date so that Tesco thinks it's getting best value out of its brand. 

Having worked with them previously via another underwriter they were very different to any other affinity party in that they wanted to be involved a lot more. The issue was they were fairly happy for it to simply wash its face and resisted price increases etc. Obviously for us we need it to make a profit as it's our only revenue stream. In our case they served notice on us but have known underwriters to refuse to renew an affinity deal if the numbers arent stacking up forcing the brand to move to another firm. 

Generally in these deals the affinity partner "owns" the customer so when they go you as underwriter can't offer renewal terms and instead they take their customer data with them and their new partner offers the new policy.

Each company is different though... did some work with an MGA thats big in travel insurance affinity deals. They set the base price for the policy based on any optional extras the company want included (including service items like their customers calls are prioritised) and the affinity brand sets the retail price. Funnily a well known budget brand went for all the bells and whistles but sold it at cost price so would actually be losing money on the deal whereas another well known "ethical" brand went for none of the upgrades and sold it with the biggest margin of all our deals. 

Not really much to say, you won't make Tesco go back to RSA and RSA is likely to treat you as a new not renewing customer were you to ask them for a quote. Unfortunately there arent the same industry codes of practice as there are for Subsidence etc on Pet. 

Lottie83

Thank you, that’s helpful information. 

From a customer perspective, my policy is with Tesco. It therefore feels rather unfair that the change of underwriter has disadvantaged me financially, but presumably that’s just tough luck.