I’m back in France today, catching up with family, friends, and Zoé, our housecat. She wasn’t as excited as I was to be back home for a few days and after a shallow ‘meow’, she went to lie down on the couch and slept! How rude, and so typical!

Zoe

Nevertheless, I saw a couple of adverts for pet insurance in France, which is quite surprising because when I left last year, I didn’t even know such thing existed. The market is relatively new here in France and only a small number of firms provide cover for pets (13 in total).

Some French pet insurance firms:
1. ECA-Assurances
2. Santevet
3. Aloa Assurances
4. AG2R
5. Medortranquil

Limited cover

The benefits provided are miles away from what we can get in the UK: cover and excesses would make you discard any of these insurers in a fingersnap. Vet fees are paid to a maximum of €2500 (£2000) per year on a 12-month basis, AG2R only paying up to €468 (£370). Third party liability is up to €30 000 (£24 000) with ECA compared to the £1m to £3m we can have in the UK!

Worse is the excess. Almost never a fixed amount, the excess is 30% of the bill in most cases, rising to 50% if your pet is over 12 years old with Medortranquil. In comparison, excesses in the UK are generally below £100.

Finally, there is a period during which your pet isn’t covered although your policy started. It can vary from 0 to 30 days for accidents and 45 to 120 days for illnesses, meaning you could be left paying your vet bills if your pet were to fall ill within the first 3 months of you taking out the insurance: absolutely non-sense!!

Particularities of French pet insurance policies

Most of them require that your pet is tattooed or micro-chipped, which is a less popular identification technique in France. Most policies however pay for preventative vaccinations, which in my opinion is a good thing. There’s no direct to vet payment though and to be honest I struggled to find the additional information I wanted as literature, terms and conditions and websites are unclear about the true benefits and how to claim. We’re pretty lucky to have the FSA regulating financial services in the UK.

A market to develop, consumers to convince

Only 2% of cats and dogs are insured in France, around 20% in the UK. Pet insurance is not a service well advertised, even by vets themselves. Vet fees in France are not as expensive as in the UK, so consumers see less potential benefits of being insured. It’s a cultural thing too: British are known throughout the world to be a nation of pet-lovers and consider pets as part of their family (as well they should). French people are not into their pets as much and often consider the idea of pet insurance to be ludicrous.

Unlike most of them, I am a fully converted pet insurance supporter, but admit that in France, it currently makes less sense.