Petcover, the pet insurance group behind several UK brands including British Pet Insurance and ExoticDirect, has picked up one of Australia's least coveted consumer prizes.
Consumer group CHOICE named the insurer among the winners of its 21st annual Shonky Awards this week, singling out its Economy policy as a product whose protection shrinks just as an animal starts to need it. Petcover shares the 2026 roll of dishonour with Ticketek and Ticketmaster, Virgin Australia, Sony, Hisense and a brand of protein chips.
The complaint centres on what happens at the 12-month mark. According to CHOICE, Economy customers are not renewed in the usual sense but issued a fresh policy. Anything the pet suffered during the previous year is then treated as pre-existing and excluded – even for customers who never shopped around.
CHOICE also took issue with how widely the policy draws the line. It argues the wording catches any condition presenting with the same clinical signs as an earlier illness. A cat treated for pancreatitis, for instance, typically shows vomiting and food refusal; on CHOICE's reading, that could put a long list of unrelated stomach complaints out of bounds the following year.
CHOICE added that cover for any single condition runs for a maximum of 12 months, and that the share of vet bills reimbursed falls from up to 100% to 65% once a pet reaches 10. CHOICE accepts the age-related step-down is used by a handful of other Australian insurers too.
"Basically, you're covered until you have something that needs cover," said Daniel Graham, CHOICE's pet insurance specialist.
Petcover disputes that picture. The insurer told an Australian personal finance title that it strongly rejects CHOICE's characterisation, saying the Economy plan is designed for pets over eight and is the only policy offering this type of cover to animals of that age.
This is not CHOICE's first run-in with the sector. In 2019 it handed the whole Australian pet insurance industry a Shonky after reviewing 86 policies, citing broad pre-existing condition definitions that left owners all but unable to switch providers.
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Petcover Group is headquartered in Victoria and was founded by Doug and Gwen Ford, but it has spent the past few years building a meaningful British book. Its UK operation lists British Pet Insurance Services, Brooks Braithwaite (Sussex), ExoticDirect and Julie Andrews Horse Insurance Services among its businesses. It bought Brooks Braithwaite from ManyPets in February 2023, and later acquired Reach Financial Services, owner of the Cover My brand – a deal it said took its British customer base past 140,000.
None of CHOICE's findings relate to Petcover's UK products, which are sold under separate brands and a different regulatory regime. But the product shape under fire will be familiar to anyone selling pet cover here. Time-limited policies, which pay for each condition for up to 12 months, have long been the budget tier of the UK market. The question British regulators are asking is less whether such products should exist and more whether buyers understand what they are getting – and whether the price reflects it.
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That question has teeth. The Financial Conduct Authority has put pet insurance on its watchlist for possible intervention, pointing to steep price rises and repeated failures in customer understanding. Under Consumer Duty, manufacturers are expected to review their fair value assessments before the regulator comes knocking.
The Financial Ombudsman Service is already siding with customers in roughly half of the pet insurance disputes it decides – one of the highest uphold rates in general insurance.
Behind the complaints sit rapidly rising costs. Members of the Association of British Insurers paid out a record £1.23bn on 1.8 million pet claims in 2024, with the average claim reaching £685 against an average premium of £389. Defaqto data shows pet insurance prices have risen by around 4% since 2023, while the ONS veterinary services index has climbed 31% over the same period.
Insurers have been closing that gap by moving more of the bill onto customers. Co-payment policies now account for 41% of the UK market, up from under a third at the start of 2025 – precisely the kind of feature that tends to surprise owners of older pets at claim time.
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The Competition and Markets Authority published its final decision on the veterinary market on 24 March 2026, capping written prescription fees at £21 and requiring practices to publish their prices. Few in the market expect that to translate into cheaper premiums; Defaqto has warned that the reforms are more likely to reshuffle costs than remove them.
Which leaves the burden of explanation squarely on the people selling the cover. The British Insurance Brokers' Association joined the Pet and Equine Insurance Association as an honorary member in April, with the trade body stressing the role intermediaries play in telling customers what is and isn't covered.
CHOICE's advice to Australian owners on the Economy policy was blunt: since there is no benefit to staying put, switch. A British broker selling a cheap time-limited product to the owner of an eight-year-old labrador might reasonably ask whether their own customer would reach the same conclusion a year in – and whether the paperwork would show that anyone warned them.
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