Clarifying how Animal Friends pet insurance works

Last year, Animal Friends pet insurance re-launched their cat and dog cover offering with 7 brand new policy options – the most for any pet health insurance provider in the UK.

However, various vet fees limit apply to each of the 7 cover options and because they don’t fall into the usual 3 categories – time limited, per condition and lifetime – they are a bit more difficult to understand. The below should help clarify what’s what.

Various cover options

Below is a screenshot taken from AFI’s website. It shows the different covers, their vet fees limits and how they apply.

There are 3 types of limit that can apply to a policy:

- Annual condition limit: this limit applies per year per condition for each unrelated condition you may be claiming for. For instance, if you were to claim for diabetes with the Prime policy, you could claim up to £2,000 per year.

- Annual policy limit: this limit applies to your policy as a whole. Regardless of the number of conditions you may be claiming for, this is the total amount you are able to claim during each policy year. So, taking the above example, you may be claiming up to £2,000 this year for diabetes with the Prime policy. The annual policy limit is £7,000 which means that you can still claim up to £5,000 in vet fees for other conditions during this particular year.

- Lifetime condition limit: This is where it gets more complicated. For the Superior, Superior Plus and Prestige policies, this limit applies to the lifetime of your pet, regardless of the number of years you are with Animal Friends pet insurance. For instance with Prestige, you can claim up to £40,000 in vet fees during the time your pet is insured with AFI and regardless of the number of conditions you may be claiming for.

So, let’s detail it for each policy

Accident only: you can claim up to £2,000 per condition per year, with no annual policy limit but within the £10,000 policy limit for the lifetime of your pet.

Policies with annual policy limit but no lifetime limit

Basic: up to £500 per year per condition, within the £3,000 annual policy limit.
Prime: up to £2,000 per year per condition, within the £7,000 annual policy limit.
Prime Plus: up to £4,000 per year per condition, within the £10,000 annual policy limit.

Policies with lifetime policy limit but no annual policy limit

Superior: up to £2,000 per year per condition, within the £20,000 lifetime policy limit.
Superior Plus: up to £4,000 per year per condition, within the £30,000 lifetime policy limit.
Prestige: up to £6,000 per year per condition, within the £40,000 annual policy limit.

So is Animal Friends lifetime cover then?

Well, in the strict definition of it, AFI isn’t lifelong pet insurance because of that “lifetime policy limit”. The definition of “lifetime” is that the annual policy limit is replenished each year, with no restriction per condition or per life of the pet.

However, in actual facts, if you get £4,000 or £6,000 per condition per year and with a lifetime policy limit of £30,000 or £40,000, you’re effectively getting lifelong cover. It would indeed take you quite a few years before you run out of cover, even if you need £4,000 a year to treat an ongoing condition. And by then, I don’t think you would regret getting cover anyway.

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