Frequently Asked Questions

Your pet needs to be at least 8 weeks old. For senior dogs and mature cats, your pet should be less than 10 years old at the start of cover if you are taking out one of our Accident and Illness policies: Premier or Premier Plus.

There is no upper age limit for our Accident Only policy. Please speak to our Customer Service Centre for details.

Your cover will start on the date you specify, but there will be a 14-day ‘waiting period’ before illness cover begins. During this time any illness which occurs or shows clinical signs will be excluded from cover. The ‘waiting period’ does not apply to the Accident Only policy as illnesses are not covered.

You can pay for your policy in 12 interest-free monthly instalments by Direct Debit.

New pet insurance policies taken out benefit from either a 10% introductory discount applied to the first year of cover, or the first 5 weeks of cover free. If you insure more than one pet with us you will also be entitled to a 10% multi-pet discount – which is applied to each pet’s policy and remains in force for as long as you have more than one pet insured with us. If you have a Pet Health Plan, you may benefit from further discounts – contact us for more details. Eligible discounts are applied consecutively.

If you move house to anywhere within the UK (inc Northern Ireland) you can still keep your Vetsure pet insurance policy. You can use our Find a Vetsure Vet tool to check whether there is a Vetsure-accredited clinic near to your new home. If not, you can take your pet to any vet of your choosing – the only difference is that you will pay a slightly higher excess (£20 more) if you attend a non-Vetsure-accredited clinic. We are always happy to offer direct claims, but at non-accredited clinics this is at their discretion so you may have to pay the full cost at time of treatment and claim this back from Vetsure yourself.

These are conditions affecting body parts that your pet has a pair of e.g. eyes, ears, cruciate ligaments, hips etc. It is important to note that when we apply exclusions to cover (and also apply Benefit Limits) a ‘Bilateral Condition’ is considered as one condition.  Here are some examples of how this might be relevant to a customer:

1) If you have a Premier Plus policy (£5,000 per condition per year) and your pet is diagnosed with an ear infection affecting both ears you can claim up to £5,000 for treatment of both ears within that policy year.  When you renew you would then have another £5,000 available for both ears if further treatment was required for the same condition.

2) If your pet had surgery to repair a damaged cruciate ligament in his left hind leg before the policy was taken out, any treatment of the cruciate ligament in the right hind leg would not be covered by the policy as the condition is considered as bilateral and therefore pre-existing.

The claim excess is the amount you pay towards each new, unrelated claim for Veterinary Fees, Complementary Medicine and/or Special Diet. You will need to pay your chosen excess (£69, £109 or £149) if your pet is treated at a Vetsure-accredited clinic (or any other clinic at your Vetsure vet’s direction). The excess is increased by £20 if your pet is treated at any other veterinary practice of your own choosing. Please note that for pets over the age of 8 years, a 15% ‘co-payment’ will apply to each claim payment for Veterinary Fees, Complementary Medicine and/or Special Diet. The co-payment will be calculated as 15% of the treatment cost remaining after your excess and any other deductions (where applicable) have been subtracted.

Please note, the co-payment does not apply to Accident Only policies.

Many pet insurers state that they will ‘pay claims directly to vets’. However, it is not really up to the insurer to determine this, but at the discretion of the vet. If the vet is not confident of being paid in a timely manner by the insurer in question, they may be reluctant to agree. Some vets, as a general rule, will not undertake any direct claims on behalf of clients regardless of insurer. If this is the case, it means that you will have to pay for the treatment up front and claim from the insurer later.

As part of the accreditation process, Vetsure practices have committed to undertake direct claims for Vetsure customers as the norm – due to our prompt claim payment record, our partnered practices are more than happy to agree to this. This means that for any eligible treatments, you normally need only pay your vet the applicable excess and Vetsure will pay the remainder of the claim directly to the vet. If your pet receives treatment at a non-Vetsure-accredited clinic, we will happily agree to undertake a direct claim in the same way but we cannot guarantee that your vet will agree to this. You may have to pay the full cost at time of treatment and claim this back from Vetsure yourself. Practices may have their accreditation status changed from time-to-time so you should check our up-to-date network list when making a claim if in any doubt.

View the current list of vets in the Vetsure network.