Insu›Explainers
Reference
Pet insurance explainers.
Plain-language explanations of the four most consequential pet insurance terms in the Australian market — written so you can read your own quote summary and PDS without having to look words up.
What is pet insurance reimbursement?
Reimbursement % is the percentage of the eligible claim your insurer pays back after you've paid the vet. Australian options are usually 70%, 80%, or 90% — sometimes 60% or 100%. The choice you make at signup affects every future claim.
Excess and co-payment
Excess is the fixed dollar amount you pay before cover kicks in. Co-payment is your share of what's left, set by the reimbursement %. Per-claim vs per-condition excess models matter more than most marketing pages explain.
Pre-existing conditions
Any condition your pet has shown signs of before policy commencement is treated as pre-existing and usually excluded. Three brands offer review pathways letting some exclusions be lifted. The bilateral condition rule catches most buyers off guard.
Sub-limits in the PDS
The headline annual cover limit ($25k, $35k) isn't what you can claim per condition — sub-limits cap individual categories like dental, behavioural, and cruciate ligament treatment. Where to find them in the PDS and why they often matter more than headline cover.
Where to use these
Read the four explainers in order if you're new to pet insurance and want a complete mental model. They're designed to interlock — the reimbursement % and excess explainers feed into the sub-limits explainer, and the pre-existing explainer is the prerequisite for understanding the older-pet comparison. The full sequence takes about 20 minutes to read end-to-end.
If you're shopping for a specific scenario, the comparison pages at Compare use these terms throughout — having read the explainers makes the brand-by-brand comparisons readable without backtracking. The insurer reviews apply the same vocabulary in the per-brand context.