Admiral Pet Insurance Review

Pets must be owned by you and living at your home address in the UK.

Your pet must be older than 8 weeks.

Admiral Insurance offer the following policies:

Value Policy covers vets fees up to £2,000 per condition time limited to a maximum of 12 months.

Standard Policy covers vets fees up to a maximum benefit of £2,500 per condition.

Classic, Premier and Premier Plus policies cover vets fees up to £2,500, £5,000 and £10,000 per year respectively, which are reinstated each year provided the policy is renewed without a break in cover.

1. Any Medication or treatment not recommended by a vet;
2. Costs for cosmetic, elective, routine or preventative treatment;
3. Routine vaccinations, spaying, castration or removal of dewclaws;
4. Grooming, killing and controlling of fleas or worms;
5. Routine blood tests/pre-anaesthetic blood tests if your pet is under the age of 8 years;
6. Any treatment in connection with pregnancy or parturition, whelping or kittening;
7. Any dog listed under the dangerous dog act including the following breed or crossbreed, African Crested Dog, American Bandogge, American Mancon, Argentinian Mastiff, American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Australian Dingo, Bandogge Mastiff, Boerboel, Bully Kutta, Canadian Inuit, Canary Dog (Pero De Pressa Canarios), Cane Corsos, Cao Fila, Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, Dogo Argentinino, Dogue Brasileros, Fila Brasileiro, Inuit, Irish Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Japanese Tosa, Korean Jindo, Laika, Lybian Desert Dog, Northern Inuit, Pit Bull Mastiff, Pit Bull Terrier, Racing Greyhound, Sarloos Wolfhound, Shar Pei, Tamaskan, Tosa Inus, Utonagan, Wolf Hybrid, Working Sheepdog, Aladseer, Asian Leopard, Feral, Munchkin, Weiner Cat, or any crossed with one of the above;
8. Any pet that has shown aggressive characteristics or is used for any guard, security, track racing, coursing, or used in connection to any business, trade, profession, commercial breeding or occupation;
9. The cost of pheromone products;
10. Costs associated with treatment for behavioural illness, behavioural modification treatment or any forms of training;
11. The death of your pet through illness for dogs and cats aged 9 and over;
12. Any costs associated with artificial body parts (except hip, elbow or knee joints);
13. Any claim in connection with organ transplants;
14. Any pet that has had more than 2 litters in its lifetime;
15. The cost of more than 1 buster collar or tee shirt being provided to your pet if the original is damaged or lost;
16. Any claim for any form of housing, cage, or bedding needed for the treatment or wellbeing of your pet;
17. Any claim as a result of any "notifiable" disease such as rabies.

If your dog is on a public highway, it must be under control, wear a collar with the name and address of the owner on it

You must notify Admiral of any change in circumstances that may affect your pet insurance.

You must take care of your pet and promptly arrange for any treatment to prevent or reduce the risk of illness or injury.

Your pet must be vaccinated against the following;

Dogs - Distemper, hepatitis, leptospirosis and parvovirus.

Cats - Feline infectious enteritis, feline influenza, feline herpes virus, feline calicivirus and feline leukaemia.

All vaccinations should be kept up to date. Homeopathic vaccinations are not acceptable.

All Admiral Pet Insurance policies cover complementary treatments between £350 and £1,000 depending the on the policy.

Alternative or Complementary treatments include Acupuncture, osteopathy, physiotherapy and chiropractic therapy. The policy also covers up to five sessions (value and standard policies) and ten sessions (classic, premier and premier plus policies) of hydrotherapy.

All treatments must be carried out by a suitably qualified practitioner and recommended by your vet.

Treatments such as pulsed magnetic field therapy, matrix energy field therapy, the Bowen Technique, Reiki massage and faith healing are excluded.

All policies cover up to £100 of prescription food, provided it is prescribed by your vet, and used to dissolve bladder stones or crystals in urine. A deduction of £0.75 per tin and £1.50 per kilo will be made in respect of normal feeding costs and payments are for a maximum of 60 days up to the limit.

Your pets dentist treatment costs are covered but only as a result of an accident.

All Admiral policies cover the cost of MRI, CT scans and Cruciate Ligaments claims. The amount of cover varies on the policy.

Value, Standard and Classic Policies - MRI scans up to £1,000, Ligament claims up to £2,000.

Premier and Premier Plus Policies - MRI scans up to £1,250, Ligament claims up to £2,500.

All Admiral Pet Insurance policies cover the cost of having your pet put to sleep up to a maximum amount of £100. This is subject to a recommendation by your vet and only to alleviate incurable and inhumane suffering.

Admiral do not cover the costs of disposal, or cremation of your pet's body.

With Admiral you can insure as many pets (cats or dogs) as you like under one policy.

You can choose different cover levels for each individual pet.

Admiral offer a 5% discount if you insure more than one pet under the same policy.

Admiral Pet Insurance will not cover any of your pets pre-existing medical conditions, described as an illness or injury, whether diagnosed or undiagnosed, that has been identified or otherwise known to you prior to the commencement of the policy.

The policy excludes any costs or treatment in connection with pregnancy or the act of giving birth.

All policies cover your pet for up to 30 days abroad, made up of no more than two holidays in any one period of insurance.

Your pet is covered against Holiday cancellation, emergency repatriation and up to £2,000 emergency vet fees whilst abroad. The policy does not cover additional quarantine expenses or loss or damage to your pet's passport.

All Admiral pet policies run for 12 months, at which point you will be given the option to renew the policy for a further 12 months.

Admiral Insurance or their representatives, will contact you by email or post at least 14 days before the renewal date of your policy.

They will set out any changes to the premium or terms and conditions for the next period of insurance.

If you pay by direct debit, your policy will automatically renew at the end of the twelve month period. If you paid by credit or debit card and the payment was set up as a continuous annual payment, your card will automatically be debited and the policy renewed.

Remember to inform Admiral if there are any factors relating to your pet that have changed.

Pet Insurance claim forms can be downloaded from the website and once completed emailed or posted. Alternatively you can contact Admiral on their claims hotline. If the cost of the claim is likely to be more than £1,000 you need to contact the Insurer prior to obtain pre-authorisation.

The site states that 96% of claims were paid out in 2018 and that on average, claims are paid within 5 working days.

The Waiting period for all Admiral Pet Insurance policies is 24 hours from commencement of the policy in respect of accidents and 14 days in respect of Illness.

If you upgrade your policy, the illness waiting period will apply from the transfer date.

All Admiral Pet Insurance policies are subject to an excess payment of £100 per claim.

Once your pet reaches the age of six, you will be required to contribute 20% of any claim, in addition to the standard policy excess.

For example a claim of £1,000 would cost you £280 (made up of a £100 excess and an additional £180 20% of £900).

The Admiral policy wording is 13 pages long and includes a very helpful summary of cover benefits allowing an easy comparison of the various policies.

This is followed by an explanation of the different types of vet fees cover available. An index makes finding your way around the policy easier and although not the most visually inspiring document, it is fairly easy to navigate the various sections of cover.

The policy wording text had an average reading score of 50.8 (out of 100), classed as fairly difficult to read.

The text had an average reading age of 14-15 years. This means that a person with a reading age of 14-15 years should be able to understand the policy.

Admiral pet insurance is listed on Money Supermarket, Confused.com and Compare the Market.

Our mystery shopping exercise revealed the cover and excess to be the same in all cases.

We found that the cost of time limited and maximum benefit policies were the same, but that lifetime policies were ten percent cheaper on comparison websites. We were unable to determine whether this was a pricing error and recommend comparing quotes with ones from Admiral Direct.

Admiral Pet Insurance policies do not include access to dedicated pet or bereavement counselling helplines.

Admiral insurance have received over 7000 reviews on trust pilot and an overall rating of 3.7 out of 5. This rating takes into account all types of insurance and not just pet.

Although their overall rating is a bit low, most of the recent reviewers are happy with the service they received. A popular cause for negative reviews were because of increases in renewal premiums. Renewal premiums can increase for many different reasons and are unable to comment on individual cases.

The Insurance Factory, who manage pet insurance on behalf of Admiral do charge administration fees.

They are;

£30 for any cancellation whether inside the first 14 days or not.

£10 if you require documents to be posted to you.

£10 for any mid term adjustment.

We were unable to find any special discounts or promotions.

The website has a more modern feel to it and is neatly laid out. All relevant information is provided to allow easy comparison between the policies.

It's a shame that the only way of contacting Admiral is via their call centre. We gave up in our initial attempt to make contact and wonder if the experience is the same when making a claim.

Some feedback indicates confusion over who actually deals with the day to day management of Admirals Pet Insurance. All policies are in fact arranged, administered and managed by a third party company, the Insurance Factory Ltd.

How competitive are Admiral's pet insurance policies?

According to our latest premium research Admiral's value, standard and Classic policies are competitively priced, whilst the Premier and Premier Plus policies were not as keenly priced as other comparable policies.