Briefing: When everyone does their job, who is looking after the animal?

Last week, I attended the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) Pet Forum, where industry representatives discussed complaints, emerging issues and the challenges of resolving disputes.

It was a valuable event but, typically for me, I came away with more questions than answers – particularly about what these discussions ultimately mean for the animal at the centre of them.

We spend considerable time examining whether organisations fulfil their responsibilities, make fair decisions, interpret policies correctly and meet regulatory requirements. But even when everyone is doing their job effectively, does that necessarily mean their combined decisions deliver the right outcomes for the animal?

The problem isn’t that nobody is looking after the animal. It’s that responsibility is spread across people and organisations making different decisions, often without knowing how those decisions affect one another. The animal ultimately experiences the consequences.

One important example of this, raised at the forum, was the interpretation of aggressive behaviour.

Aggression is a behaviour – sometimes a natural response to pain, fear or distress – rather than necessarily a fixed characteristic of an animal. Yet how that behaviour is recorded and interpreted can affect insurance cover, particularly for rehomed animals with incomplete medical or behavioural histories.

An insurer may legitimately apply a policy exclusion, a vet may accurately record the behaviour and the FOS may need to determine whether the insurer’s interpretation was fair.

Each brings a different perspective to decisions involving clinical evidence, behavioural context and potentially subjective judgements. But what happens when the evidence is open to interpretation and the consequences extend beyond the insurance decision?

A fair process?

According to the FOS’s 2025/26 annual complaints data, 41% of resolved pet insurance complaints were upheld in favour of customers, compared with 30% across financial products generally.

These figures relate only to complaints referred to the FOS rather than all to pet insurance claims, but they raise important questions about why disputes arise and whether more could be resolved earlier.

The nature of those complaints matters. Disputed claims may affect an owner’s ability to fund treatment, while significant premium increases raise different questions around affordability and maintaining cover, particularly for animals with existing conditions.

Both can have implications for animal welfare, albeit in different ways and over different timescales.

For me, the question goes beyond whether complaints are resolved fairly. What can we learn from the issues behind them? Are those insights informing improvements to insurance products, claims handling and customer experience? And do we understand whether those improvements make any difference to the animal?

Complex complaints require careful consideration, but an animal’s needs don’t necessarily align with complaints-handling timescales.

Treatment may be needed before a dispute is resolved, leaving owners struggling to fund care while veterinary practices balance clinical recommendations against financial constraints.

A complaint may ultimately be resolved in the policyholder’s favour, but that doesn’t necessarily tell us what happened in the meantime.

If financial uncertainty influenced treatment decisions, an animal’s condition may have deteriorated, options may have changed or opportunities for earlier intervention may have been lost.

Financial redress may put things right for the policyholder. It cannot always put things right for the animal.

Not every dispute affects an animal’s welfare and we shouldn’t assume that it does. But do we know how often financial uncertainty influences decisions about care and what happens to an animal while a complaint is being resolved?

A holistic perspective

We have organisations responsible for veterinary standards, insurance regulation, complaints, animal welfare and consumer protection, each with distinct responsibilities.

That separation has its merits, but an animal’s experience doesn’t fit neatly within organisational boundaries.

Pet insurance is a financial contract with the policyholder, not the animal. Insurers aren’t responsible for clinical decisions or guaranteeing welfare outcomes, but insurance can influence an owner’s ability to fund veterinary care.

Decisions about cover and claims may therefore have consequences beyond the financial outcome for the policyholder. Recognising that influence isn’t about extending insurers’ obligations, but understanding how those decisions interact with the wider care journey.

What we understand less well is where those interactions can create unintended consequences and whether opportunities to improve animal welfare are being missed.

Looking at the whole journey

These questions underpin Peia’s Companion Animal Welfare Journey (CAWJ) research, which examines an animal’s life from before ownership to the end of its life through four perspectives – the animal, the person caring for it, the veterinary and wider care team and the insurer.

We aim to understand where responsibilities intersect, what works well and where unintended consequences arise.

This isn’t about assigning blame, but recognising that improving each part of a system does not necessarily improve the system as a whole.

Our findings will inform The Pet Pledge, an industry initiative we hope to launch in April 2027, which aims to bring stakeholders together to strengthen animal welfare, access to care, trust and long-term sustainability.

No single organisation is responsible for the entire journey, but we need to understand how decisions interact and whether their combined impact supports good welfare outcomes.

Perhaps the first step is simply to become more curious about the consequences of decisions made within our own organisations – and more willing to share what we learn with others influencing the same animal’s journey.

Beyond the policies, processes and regulatory responsibilities is a living animal whose needs may be immediate and whose welfare is influenced by decisions far beyond the consulting room.

If everyone is doing their job, but the animal still experiences a poor outcome, who is looking at the whole picture?

And if nobody is, who is really looking after the animal?