If it means diddly squat to you then you are welcome to ignore it, but for me - and I guess lots of other people who are interested in how one of the leading UK pet insurance companies categorizes breeds into bands - the information is very useful.

How is it useful?

It's not a matter of personal opinion Azz, the information gained just isn't reliable for the reasons I've stated. They only categorize them in the that way to fit their underwritten criteria. If they categorized purely on a health basis then yes it would be useful, but health is considered along with many, many other risks to the point where the usefulness of the data is diluted also. It's a good idea, but in reality the only information you'll gain is that particular insurance companies opinion of the risk as a whole that each breed represents, not just the health of that breed.

Ok I've just read that and I'm not making myself very clear so I'm going to try again!

Just because one breed on this thread is more expensive to insure than another, doesn't mean that one breed is less healthy than the other. All it means is this particular insurance company sees one breed as a bigger risk to insure for a myriad of reasons - not just health. It's all these other reasons that will skew and dilute the data you've collected to the point where it's not accurate enough to be useful.

Wow thanks Azz, you have done an AMAZING job, a very very big thanks to you.

There are indeed some surprises - I think the biggest one of all is that the GSD is not in the red catagory - no surprise at all to me that the Dogue de Bordeaux is the most expensive, admittedly only by a few pence.

It is very surprising to see that, for instance, a Sibe is at the same level as a mongrel or crossbreed. Not because I think that Sibes are unhealthy, not at all, but just that they have a higher value.

A very, very interesting and worthwhile exercise Azz.

That adds up Azz. Tai is 7 or 8 now, and we have the top level of cover, and we pay about £22 I think OH said, maybe it's a bit less. We live in the depths of Northants so a very low risk crime area.

Maybe you would like to do a comparison/average among every single insurance company per breed then to get a more 'accurate' result then?

Only because this particular insurance company views the risk this way, if you used the same data again with a different insurance company, the result would be completely different! This insurance company might have crossbreeds and Sibes underwritten as the same risk, the next insurance company might not and all you'll have learnt is..........that each insurance company has it's risks underwritten differently!

O dear, methinks sour grapes could be creeping in here because our breeds are possibly on the "higher list"? I haven't looked to see Ripsnorter, tbh, but I think you are being very unfair to Azz who has obviously put in a lot of work. If you take the average insurance company, which I am sure Azz would have done - say Tesco, Direct Line, Sainsbury, maybe even Pet Plan although they are very expensive - the point is that the DIFFERENTIAL is going to be the same - the difference between insuring a mutt like mine and a Dogue de Bordeaux is going to be proportionally the same for every insurance company, whichever company you choose. The actual different LEVELS may vary enormously, but the proportional differences will be the same.

Actually I've been looking around and have found most of the 'top' insurers are coming back with very similar quotes.

I don't recall Azz saying anything about it representing how healthy a breed is or not Infact, multiple times he just says it's to see how much/little a breed costs to insure.

No they don't actually, I used to work in the insurance industry many moons ago, and they all work on the same principles of statistical likelihood of such and such happening or such and such a breed getting such and such a disorder. Whereas the actual premiums might differ Ripsnorter from company to company - and clearly they do, else websites like compare the market would not exist - the differentials remain roughly the same.

To give an example, let's say that Tesco wanted £28 a month off me to insure Tai. The company we have moved to are offering a better level of insurance - higher 3rd party liability, higher vet bill cover - for about £6 a month less than Tesco. BUT ... if I went to Tesco and said I have a pedigree labrador - of the same age as Tai - presumably the premium would be higher. If I then went to my present company with the same dog to insure, again, the premium would be higher, because the labrador is a pedigree. But the difference between insuring Tai and the labrador at Tesco, would be roughly the same as insuring Tai and the labrador at my cheaper company.

Do you see my point? Not sure if I have explained it very well