Buying health cover for their pets on the rise
Hyderabad: Pet parents go the extra mile to keep their pets healthy. In this direction, many are now opting to buy insurance cover for their pets. The cover starts around Rs 300 per year for a small pet for a single type of cover such as terminal diseases. Players like Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, The […]
Hyderabad: Pet parents go the extra mile to keep their pets healthy. In this direction, many are now opting to buy insurance cover for their pets. The cover starts around Rs 300 per year for a small pet for a single type of cover such as terminal diseases.
Players like Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, The New India Assurance and Oriental Insurance are offering pet insurance. Varying with the plan choices, the cover offers mortality benefit, surgery expenses, third party liability, transit expenses, theft/loss/straying cover and others. The entry age ranges from three months to ten years.
The policies also have some exclusions. Surgeries that are not necessitated because of illness or accident are excluded. Also, surgeries to cure deformities or congenital defects, those done due to pregnancy or whelping, those related to grooming, cosmetic and elective and dental surgery not caused by the accident or injury are excluded. Canine insurance can be bought for indigenous, cross-bred as well as exotic dogs.
“Usually, pet parents go for a long-term cover with a lump sum coverage of Rs 25,000 which comes at an annual premium of Rs 1,284 for a large category dog aged not more than seven years,” said Tarun Mathur, CBO- General Insurance and Co-Founder, PolicyBazaar.com, an insurance aggregator.
According to Mathur, the plan includes cover for Epilepsy, Pancreatitis, Cushing’s Syndrome, Diabetes, Thyroid Dysfunction, Ascites, Glaucoma and Inflammatory Bowel Disease. While applying for pet insurance, pet owners need to share pictures or nose print or photo of microchip or RFID tag to identify the pet.
Policybazaar recently conducted an online survey among 4,500 consumers to analyse awareness levels and uptake of cyber, mental health, home and pet insurances. It observed that as many as 70% of the pet owners considered buying a policy.
However, only 10% of them actually bought one. While the pet insurance penetration overall was low, among the buyers, Tier-2 respondents ranked the highest with 10%. The number stood at just 3% for both Tier-1 and 3 locations. Potential hazards and cover for surgery costs were seen as the key factors followed by OPD cost and death of the pet.
Insurtech startup InsuranceDekho too has recently introduced dog health cover in partnership with Future Generali India Insurance Company.
“India has an estimated pet population of 32 million pets growing at 12% yearly, with dogs making up almost 85% of the total population. We can infer that the number of dogs insured in India is also on the rise,” said Ankit Agrawal, Co-Founder and CEO of InsuranceDekho.
InsuranceDekho offers comprehensive coverage for over 25 breeds of dogs, aged 6 months to 10 years. The pet insurance policy as of now has a starting premium of about Rs 324 annually.
