Briefing: How pet insurance can support better access to care

Every pet insurer will recognise the situation when a customer suddenly discover they aren’t covered as expected, or when a claims conversation reveals a misunderstanding formed years earlier.

This is exactly the challenge the Pet and Equine Insurance Association (Peia) is tackling by mapping the whole-life journey of companion animals and building an understanding of where access to veterinary care and insurance breaks down – and why.

This work will feed into The Pet Pledge, Peia’s developing framework for improving access to care, building trust and supporting the long-term sustainability of pet insurance.

The journey will help identify the evidence, priorities and areas for collaboration that The Pet Pledge will take forward – and we’re asking insurers to help shape it from the beginning.

Earlier in 2026, we asked veterinary professionals where interactions with insurance were creating friction and their feedback highlighted a range of issues, often connected to decisions or expectations formed much earlier in an animal’s journey. 

But rather than try to tackle these individual points of friction one by one, we decided to examine the whole care journey and address the most significant issues. We’re not assuming every stage of the process needs fixing, far from it, but we want to identify which interactions genuinely affect preparedness, access to care and welfare outcomes. 

Insurance insight and input is essential to this because, while essential, veterinary evidence, complaints and consumer research cannot show us the full picture. Insurers understand how products are designed, priced, underwritten, distributed and administered – and can see patterns in claims, cancellations, complaints and renewal behaviour. 

Critically, insurers also know where insurance works well and enables customers to access treatment otherwise unavailable to them, while providing veterinary professionals greater clinical choice. 

The essential question is ”how many challenges that become visible during a claim actually began much earlier?”.

Insurers are not wrong to apply the terms of a policy that specifies a £1,000 per condition limit, for example, but customer misunderstanding about the cost of care can leave them distressed during treatment and force conversations around affordability at the worst possible moment. 

This scenario does not necessarily reflect badly on any party, but examining it from each perspective allows us to identify where the best opportunities to improve access to care really are.

The animal’s voice

While the policyholder, insurer and veterinarian all experience the process from their own vantage points, the one perspective that can’t speak for itself is the animal’s – and this is often the easiest perspective to lose when the conversation becomes too centred on cost, cover or process.

Animals obviously don’t experience claims limits, policy exclusions or difficult renewal conversations directly, but they do experience the impacts. Animal welfare can’t be treated as something that naturally follows the conclusion of insurance and access questions – it needs to be built deliberately into the journey at every stage. 

Each part of the pet insurance chain only experiences part of the issue and while each perspective is valid, they are incomplete unless they consider the animal at the centre of the process and each of the other participants. 

Veterinary professionals will see things insurers can’t, just as insurers will understand product designs, underwriting and claims issues that are not visible to those in clinical practice. 

The next stage of our work for The Pet Pledge is to test these pet journeys against all of these perspectives – and one question we are particularly interested in is where they align. 

Insurers have an important role in helping us answer that question. Once the initial journey map has been tested and challenged we will examine the evidence, with some findings relating directly to insurance products, underwriting, distribution, claims and renewal. 

Other findings will set outside the insurance world but still affect whether cover is understood, purchased and maintained to support timely access to care.

But this isn’t a pre-agreed set of answers from Peia – the value of the work depends entirely on whether it reflects the evidence we receive from everyone – including insurers. 

We want insurers to review the initial journey map and tell us where it does not reflect the reality, which interactions are missing, where insurance supports access to care and where unintended friction may arise. 

We’re also asking for insurers to share evidence that can help us to distinguish between individual experiences and market narratives. 

The animal experiences one continuous journey, it’s the organisations and professions caring for that animal that divide that journey into separate interactions. Understanding access to care – and how insurance can support animal welfare – must start with seeing the whole picture.