Claims related questions – Excess and Co-payments
Being an ethical pet insurance company, Animal Friends deals with a large volume of customers each week. Not all of these are sales calls; often we have customers calling up for advice, to query policy wording or to double check their own cover. We want to make your time with us as easy to understand as possible, so we’re running this series of blogs on all processes within our company, so that you can understand what to expect when dealing with making a claim, phoning a sales advisor or even just asking customer services for help.
Today we’re looking at the claims department, focussing on our excess and co-payment policies. A common question that we are asked at animal friends is ‘why is there a co-payment’, a question intrinsically related to our ‘pets over 8’ policy. We all know that when pets reach a certain age, they become more prone to long term illnesses as, like us humans, their bodies unfortunately deteriorate – and with on-going problems such as diabetes and arthritis you will need repeated visits to the vets, which inevitably leads to more expensive vet bills.
We aim to keep premiums on all our policies as low and consistent as possible, no matter the age of your pet; when your pet is over 8, co-payments are used to help this. Animal Friends are one of the only pet insurers who will insure a pet of any age on all our policies, whether it is lifetime or non-lifetime. Having a co-payment in place for older pets enables us to do this.
How do excesses work?
An excess payment is a portion of any claim payment that is first paid by the policy holder before an insurer then pays the rest of the claim. Animal Friends offers a £69 or £99 excess, which the policy holder chooses at the inception of the insurance policy. The reason for this is simple; if you want to pay less on your monthly/annual insurance premiums, choose the higher excess. If you don’t want to pay out quite so much in an emergency situation, and have no qualms with a slightly increased monthly/annual premium rate, choose the lower excess.
Animal Friends Insurance offers a wide range of comprehensive cover, so to get a quote phone us on 0844 55 70 300 or email info@animalfriends.co.uk and ask how we can help your animal friend today.
