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Ethical Pet Insurance

In this guide we investigate rate and rank the environmental and social record of 13 pet insurance underwriters.

We also look at tax avoidance, specialist brokers and give our Best Buy recommendations.

About Ethical Consumer

This is a shopping guide from Ethical Consumer, the UK's leading alternative consumer organisation. Since 1989 we've been researching and recording the social and environmental records of companies, and making the results available to you in a simple format.

Learn more about us  →

What to buy

What to look for when buying pet insurance:

  • Does the company have an ethical investment policy? A growing number of companies have some form of ethical policy on investments. But often these only exclude the most extreme players in a sector, for example those making cluster munitions or over 50% of profits from coal mining. Look for a company with a  more stringent policy on investments.

  • Is the company transparent about its investments? Transparency around investments is rare in this sector. Very few companies publish shareholdings, let alone information about how they use them to steer those companies that they invest in. Look out for those that do.

  • Is it a member of ClimateWise? ClimateWise is a voluntary insurance industry initiative, focused on responding to the risks and opportunities of climate change. The companies involved commit to take action in many ways: through leading risk analysis, informing public policy, supporting climate awareness, and incorporating climate change into investment strategy.

Subscribe to see which companies we recommend as Best Buys and why 

What not to buy

What to avoid when buying pet insurance:

  • Is the company likely to be using tax avoidance strategies? Tax avoidance is known to be pervasive in the financial sector, and the insurance industry appears to be no exception.

  • Is it investing in arms & military supply? Many of the biggest insurance companies invest in a whole host of unsavoury industries like the military. Avoid companies that lose marks in the Arms & Military category on our table.

  • Is it a friend of coal? The most recent 'Unfriend Coal' report listed a number of major insurance firms that are investors in this carbon intensive industry. We cannot afford to build a single new coal plant if we are to meet the two degree goal set at COP21 in Paris 2015 and coal already accounts for 44% of CO2 emissions worldwide, so avoid these companies.

Subscribe to see which companies to avoid and why

Score table

Updated live from our research database

← Swipe left / right to view table contents →
Brand Score(out of 20) Ratings Categories Positive Scores

E&L pet insurance

Company Profile: Equine & Livestock Insurance Co Ltd
14

Great Lakes insurance

Company Profile: Great Lakes Reinsurance (UK) SE
14

Inter Hannover insurance

Company Profile: Inter Hannover
14

Red Sands pet insurance

Company Profile: Red Sands Insurance Group
14

Ultimate pet insurance

Company Profile: Ultimate HC Limited
14

Zenith insurance

Company Profile: Zenith Insurance Management Plc
14

MORE TH>N pet insurance

Company Profile: RSA Insurance Group plc
6.5

Churchill pet insurance

Company Profile: Churchill Insurance
6

Direct line pet insurance

Company Profile: Direct Line Insurance Group plc
6

NFU Mutual pet insurance

Company Profile: National Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Society Limited
5

Allianz pet insurance

Company Profile: Allianz SE
3

Petplan pet insurance

Company Profile: Pet Plan Ltd
3

What is most important to you?

Animals
Environment
People
Politics
Product sustainability

Our Analysis

The insurance industry is huge, not just in terms of sales each year. Insurers often hold vast investments in other companies, as we have explained in our home insurance guide. In the UK alone, insurance companies manage investments equivalent to around 25% of the country’s net worth.

This means that they are indirectly financing everything from tar sands to the sales of arms. In this guide, we have tried to find the pet insurance companies with the most ethical approach to investment.

There are two types of insurance company: brokers and underwriters:

Brokers sell policies on behalf of one or more underwriters, and include well known brands such as Sainsbury and the AA. For example, as of 2020, Allianz insurance is sold by Coop. Brokers make money by receiving a commission from the underwriter, once a policy is sold.

Underwriters are the companies that take most of the money from an insurance premium, but which also pay out when something goes wrong. They may not be as visible as the broker’s insurance brand. But they wield a significant amount of power in the global economy. Insurers often holding vast investments in other companies, as we have explained in our home insurance guide.

This means that they are often indirectly financing everything from tar sands to the sales of arms. That is why we have focused on them for this report.

Just to make things more confusing, some underwriters do sell directly to the public, or belong to the same company group as the broker itself. Others may re-insure a specific risk via a different underwriter (basically insurance for the insurer).

What to look for?

In the UK alone, there are hundreds of brokers – too many to include in our reports, so our ranking tables only include underwriting companies.

Unfortunately, most of us will buy our policy through a broker, so you may have to do some extra digging. You can find the underwriter by looking at the ‘Key Facts’ document that the broker must provide when you are deciding to take out a policy. Comparison sights like Money Supermarket will also either provide these documents or tell you who the underwriter is.

How we rate companies

Several campaign groups have published reports about specific investments held by insurance companies (or the banks by which they are owned). We have marked down the companies named in these, and have included some more detail about the reports throughout the finance guides. Insurance companies appeared in Don’t bank on the Bomb, Unfriend Coal (see our home insurance guide); and Israel Report (see our current accounts guide).

We also looked for investments in specific companies, beginning with some of the largest in the UK and US such as WalMart, General Electric and Coca-Cola. Where the insurance company holds shares in, for example, a company criticised for pollution, it will also receive half a mark in the Pollution and Toxics column on the table. Most companies lost multiple marks in this way.

Where no ethical investment policy or shareholdings could be found for a company, it was assumed to have investments in companies criticised under all Ethical Consumer categories – as, sadly, is the norm in this industry. We also wrote to these companies to check there wasn’t a policy somewhere we hadn’t found.

Companies with an ethical policy on investments

A growing number of companies have some form of ethical policy on investments. But often these only exclude the most extreme players in a sector, for example those making cluster munitions or over 50% of profits from coal mining. We were looking for something a bit more robust, which crosses lots of sectors. At the time of writing this guide, only one company in our pet insurance guide had this: The Co-op. However, as of 2020, Co-op Insurance was being underwritten by Allianz.

Tax avoidance

Tax avoidance is known to be pervasive in the financial sector, and the insurance industry appears to be no exception. Almost all those companies that had business abroad also appeared to have lots of high-risk subsidiaries registered in tax havens. Companies that got a worst rating for likely use of tax avoidance strategies lost a whole mark under Anti-Social Finance, and those that got a middle lost half a mark.

Best: Direct Line, Liverpool Victoria, Equine & Livestock Insurance, Zenith

Worst: Allianz, Hanover Re, Markerstudy, NFU Mutual, Red Sands, RSA

Red Sands even gave a history of Gibraltar’s (lax) tax laws on its website!

Ethical pet insurance broker

Animal Friends is an ethical pet insurance broker. Established in 1998 in order to raise funds for animal welfare charities through insurance premiums, the company has donated over £3million to date. Unfortunately, the company’s policies are underwritten by Red Sands Insurance, which did not have any ethical policies for investments and received Ethical Consumer’s worst ratings for both likely use of tax avoidance strategies and environmental reporting.

Company profile

Allianz, Pet Plan is one of the world’s biggest insurers, the German company Allianz is top dog in the UK pet insurance market with its PetPlan brand accounting for 24% of all premiums.

The Unfriend Coal scorecard, released in November 2017, said that the company ‘leads the list of fossil fuel investors among insurance companies with $59 billion in shares and bonds—equal to the full GDP of Uruguay.’ Allianz has also been criticised by holding large investments in nuclear weapons and cluster munition producers.

Want to know more?

If you want to find out detailed information about a company and more about its ethical rating, then click on a brand name in the score table above.

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