Pet insurance survey results

One of the aims of the AVA’s five strategic priorities, to ensure economic sustainability, is to increase the take-up of pet insurance among Australian pet owners.

To support this, the AVA set up a pet insurance taskforce in August 2013. Its objective is to work with the profession and pet insurance companies to identify issues that need to be addressed, so that pet owners have confidence that pet insurance is a trustworthy and valuable part of pet care.

Members of the taskforce have met with the two underwriters of pet insurance products in Australia, Allianz and Hollard, to learn more about their operational models. Allianz is the underwriter of PetPlan and Hollard is the underwriter for PetSure, which represents all the other pet insurers.

The pet insurance taskforce agreed that it needed to go beyond the opinion of the committee to identify common problems experienced with pet insurance and claiming. A pet insurance member survey was circulated in February this year.

While a good proportion of veterinarians promote pet insurance in their practice (81%) many are still frustrated with pet insurance and the claiming process.

Key results

The survey results highlighted several problems that members believe are preventing greater take-up of pet insurance in Australia. These problems include:

• the different levels of cover and the large number of products available
• policy exclusions
• refused claims
• cost and a perceived lack of value.

The main barriers members cited to promoting pet insurance to clients included:

• a lack of knowledge of the different products
• complexity of pet insurance
• rejected claims and exclusions.

Some of the frustrations that veterinarians have experienced with pet insurance included:

• a lack of cover for some procedures
• definition of a pre-existing condition versus an abnormality
• the time it takes to complete claim forms
• having to supply a history for every claim.

Key areas for improvement

Members felt that the key areas for improvement that would help to address some of their frustrations with pet insurance include one claim form for all products and the ability to claim online.

Others identified include:

• reducing the number of pet insurance policies on the market
• more clarity about exclusions up-front
• better customer service from insurance companies
• more clarity around rejected claims and exclusions.

The results of this survey will be used to form recommendations to the underwriters.

Rena Richmond
Media and Campaigns Manager

This article appeared in the May 2014 issue of the Australian Veterinary Journal