As a brand, M&S needs little introduction – it is a British institution. As well as food, clothes, homeware and Christmas adverts, M&S offers financial products, including home, car and pet insurance.
M&S’s pet insurance policy is underwritten by Royal & Sun Alliance (RSA), which also underwrites policies for John Lewis and Tesco.
Both ManyPets and M&S only offer lifetime pet insurance policies. That means the vet fee cover level resets every year you renew so it can cover ongoing illness and conditions throughout the lifetime of your pet.
At ManyPets, our Complete policy has £15,000 of vet fee cover, which is more than double M&S's highest cover level of £7,000.
We have Regular and Value policies that provide £7,000 and £3,000 of cover respectively. With M&S you can choose £4,000 of cover on its Standard policy or £3,000 with Essential.
One of the differences between ManyPets and M&S is that ManyPets policies will cover conditions that ended more than two years ago. At M&S they would be classed as pre-existing conditions for the rest of your pet's life, meaning they wouldn't be covered if you were to switch pet insurance providers or if they had shown signs before you took out your current policy.
At ManyPets we also have a policy that can cover pre-existing conditions as long as they haven't needed treatment or advice the three months before the policy starts.
If you switch to us from another provider, there's no wait period before you can make a claim. M&S has a 14-day exclusion period before a claim can be made, even if you've switched with no break in your cover.
Both M&S' and ManyPets' most comprehensive policies include cover for dental accidents and illness, complementary therapies, loss, theft and death.
ManyPets will give you a 15% multi-pet discount for insuring more than one pet on the same policy. M&S's multi-pet discount is 5%.
Both providers include access to 24-hour vet advice lines with their cover.
ManyPets has 24/7 access to UK vets with FirstVet. Video calls let the vet see any issues with the pet so they can offer treatment, recommendations or a referral to a vet. M&S offers Vetfone, where you can ask any questions or discuss your concerns with a UK qualified veterinary professional, but there's no video consultations.
Use this table to compare what M&S and ManyPets cover. The table compares our Complete policy to M&S's Premier policy.
| ManyPets | M&S | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest level of vet fee cover | £15,000 (Complete) | £7,000 (Premier) |
| Access to free video vet appointments | Yes (24/7 video vet calls through First Vet) | No (Does have a 24/7 Vetfone helpline) |
| Claims waiting period is removed if you switch to the provider | Yes | No (14-day waiting period) |
| Lifetime cover | All policies | All policies |
| Excess payable | Once per year | Per new condition |
| Multi-pet discount | Yes – 15% (our multi-pet discount is not currently available on our Value 2k policy) | Yes – 5% |
| Cover for dental accidents and illness | Yes | Yes |
The cost of pet insurance is affected by:
The best way to find out how much you'll pay for M&S pet insurance is to get a quote.
Get a personalised M&S pet insurance quote.
Defaqto – the independent financial services reviewing site – gave M&S’s Premier pet insurance policy 5 out of 5 stars, making it ‘an excellent product with a comprehensive range of features and benefits’. The company’s Standard and Essential received four stars and three stars respectively.
Fairer Finance rated M&S 23rd out of 28 providers in autumn 2021. ManyPets was ranked first and won a Fairer Finance gold ribbon.
