Embrace Pet Insurance Review
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5.0 NerdWallet rating | Plans offered: Accident and illness, accident-only, wellness. | |
Breadth of coverage: Good. | Range of plan options: Good. | Can pay your vet directly: No. |
The bottom line: Many ways to customize your plan, plus a diminishing deductible for healthy pets. | ||
Founded in 2003 and based in Cleveland, Embrace offers popular and comprehensive pet insurance for cats and dogs. In fact, big-name insurers Allstate, Geico and USAA use Embrace as their go-to pet insurance provider. So if you're a Geico customer trying to buy a policy for your dog, for instance, Geico will provide you with a quote from Embrace.
The standard Embrace plan reimburses up to 90% of your vet expenses for a wide variety of conditions and treatments. You can easily customize the plan to include a deductible, reimbursement amount and annual limit you feel comfortable with.
Further, all Embrace pet insurance policies come with a unique feature: a diminishing deductible for healthy animals. Each year you don’t file a claim, your deductible will be reduced by $50.
Embrace also donates $2 per policy sold to charitable causes.
Embrace pros and cons
Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Deductible goes down each year you don't make a claim. | Doesn't cover prescription food or supplements. |
Many ways to customize your plan. | |
Orthopedic waiting period can be reduced with a vet exam. |
Embrace pet insurance
5.0
NerdWallet ratingEmbrace earned 5 stars out of 5 for overall performance. NerdWallet’s ratings are determined by our editorial team. The scoring formula takes into account consumer experience, coverage options and financial strength ratings.
Based on this rating, Embrace is on NerdWallet's list of the Best Pet Insurance Companies.
State availability
Embrace pet insurance is available in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Embrace pet insurance plans
Embrace offers several types of coverage to choose from.
Coverage for accidents and illnesses
For most pets, Embrace offers a single policy covering accidents and illnesses. It will reimburse you a certain percentage of your vet bill, up to your annual limit and minus your deductible. As long as you enroll your pet by the age of 14, the pet can have accident and illness coverage for life.
Pets who start their policies at age 15 or older are eligible for accident-only coverage.
Wellness Rewards
In most states, you can add Wellness Rewards, which helps pay for flea and tick prevention, vaccinations and other routine expenses. There’s no copayment for Wellness Rewards, and your spending under this plan doesn’t count toward the deductible on your accident and injury policy.
The Wellness Rewards plan is designed to save you about $25 on care per year, as long as you use your entire reimbursement allowance. For example, the plan with a $250 annual allowance costs $18.25 a month in premiums, or $225 for the year. But if you don’t spend the full $250 allowance at the vet that year, you could end up paying more for the coverage than you get out of it.
Wellness Rewards isn’t available in Rhode Island.
What Embrace pet insurance covers
The standard Embrace policy includes:
Exams, treatment, hospitalization and surgery for injuries and illnesses, including cancer.
Diagnostic tests.
Prescription medication.
Hereditary conditions.
Congenital conditions.
Dental illnesses, including gingivitis, up to $1,000 a year.
Complementary treatments such as acupuncture and laser therapy.
Treatments prescribed by veterinary specialists, such as behavioralists and oncologists.
The accident-only plan for senior pets doesn’t pay for treatment of any illnesses. However, it will cover scenarios like your cat swallowing a toy or your dog getting hit by a car. This policy also covers bloat, an emergency condition in which the stomach twists upon itself. Prescription medication to help treat these accidents is covered in every state except New York.
The Wellness Rewards plan covers routine care, such as:
Vaccinations.
Spaying and neutering.
Flea, tick and heartworm preventives.
Microchipping.
Wellness exams.
Grooming and nail clipping.
Cremation or burial.
Nutritional supplements and prescription diet food.
Training.
Preventive teeth cleaning.
What’s not covered
Embrace accident and illness insurance doesn’t cover:
Preexisting conditions, except for curable conditions that haven’t recurred in at least a year.
Expenses associated with breeding or pregnancy.
Illness or injury due to fighting, racing or mistreatment.
Cosmetic procedures.
Wellness care.
Prescription supplements or diets (unless you’ve added Wellness Rewards).
The accident-only plan won’t cover the above or treatment for any illness.
Embrace coverage options
Deductibles: Annual deductibles for the accident and illness policy range from $100 to $1,000 per year. For the accident-only policy, an annual deductible of $100 applies. For each year you don’t file a claim on either of these plans, your deductible will drop $50 until it reaches $0. If you file a claim, you’ll pay the reduced amount; then your deductible will reset to the original amount the following year.
Reimbursement amounts: For the accident and illness policy, you can choose to be reimbursed for 70%, 80% or 90% of your vet expenses. The accident-only policy reimburses you for 90% of your expenses.
Coverage limits: For the accident and illness policy, annual coverage limits range from $5,000 to unlimited. For the accident-only policy, the annual limit is $5,000.
Restrictions and waiting periods
Age restrictions: Pets must be at least 6 weeks old to get a policy. There’s no maximum age, but pets 15 and up at the time of enrollment can’t get accident and illness insurance, only coverage for accidents.
Waiting periods: A waiting period is the time between when you buy your policy and when your coverage starts. Embrace waiting periods are 48 hours for accidents, 14 days for illnesses and six months for orthopedic conditions for dogs. You may be able to reduce the latter period to 14 days by taking your dog for an orthopedic exam. There’s no waiting period for routine care covered by Wellness Rewards.
Discounts
Embrace offers the following ways to save on pet insurance:
10% multiple pet discount.
5% military discount (not available in New York or Tennessee).
You can avoid a monthly billing fee by paying your annual premium in full, upfront.
» MORE: Is pet insurance worth it?
Consumer experience
Website: The Embrace website is easy to navigate, offers quick online quotes and has plenty of coverage information. You can log in to the MyEmbrace portal to file and track claims, update your billing or policy information, add a new pet or contact customer support.
App: The highly rated Embrace mobile app lets you file claims, check remaining coverage limits, update your policy or add a new pet.
Claims: You can submit a claim online, through the app or by email, fax or physical mail. It generally takes 10 to 15 business days for Embrace to process a claim. For faster payment, sign up for direct deposit rather than receiving a check in the mail.
Customer service: You can call Embrace’s customer service representatives at 800-511-9172, Monday through Friday. You can also send an email or use the online chatbot. The PawSupport telemedicine service offers 24/7 support if you have questions about your pet’s care. You can access PawSupport by logging into your online portal.
Embrace vs. competitors
Here’s how Embrace stacks up against three other popular pet insurance companies.
Embrace vs. Healthy Paws
The Healthy Paws plan has no annual or lifetime limits but offers similar reimbursement options to the Embrace plan. Healthy Paws doesn’t sell wellness coverage, though.
Embrace covers a few things Healthy Paws doesn’t, including behavioral therapies and exam fees for illnesses and injuries. However, neither plan pays for prescription diets.
Healthy Paws promises quicker claims processing than Embrace, with most claims handled within two business days.
Coverage options | Embrace | Healthy Paws |
|---|---|---|
Deductible | $100 to $1,000 per year. | $100 to $1,000 per year. (Not all options are available to all pets.) |
Reimbursement | 70%, 80% or 90%. | 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% or 90%. (Not all options are available to all pets.) |
Annual limit | $5,000 to unlimited. | Unlimited. |
Embrace vs. Trupanion
One major difference between Embrace and Trupanion is how each company treats deductibles. Like many pet insurers, Embrace uses annual deductibles that apply across all injuries and illnesses and reset every year.
In most states, Trupanion charges lifetime per-condition deductibles instead. Say your pet develops chronic allergies and requires ongoing treatment. Once you’ve met the deductible for that condition, you no longer have to pay it for the life of your pet.
Trupanion’s standard plans offer 90% reimbursement and unlimited coverage amounts in most states, while Embrace offers more ways to customize your plan (and potentially reduce your premium).
Some treatments that Embrace’s plan covers cost extra from Trupanion, such as acupuncture and behavioral therapies. And unlike Trupanion, Embrace offers optional wellness coverage.
Coverage options | Embrace | Trupanion |
|---|---|---|
Deductible | $100 to $1,000 per year. | $0 to $1,000 per condition (except in Florida, where no deductible applies). |
Reimbursement | 70%, 80% or 90%. | 90% (except in Florida, where you can choose any reimbursement amount between 50% and 90%). |
Annual limit | $5,000 to unlimited. | Unlimited. |
Embrace vs. ASPCA
ASPCA’s accident and illness plan covers most of the same things Embrace’s plan does, including hereditary and congenital conditions, exam fees for accidents and illnesses, and alternative and behavioral therapies. However, ASPCA also covers prescription food and supplements, while Embrace does not.
ASPCA’s waiting period is 14 days for all conditions, including cruciate ligament issues. That’s shorter than Embrace’s six-month orthopedic waiting period for dogs, but longer than its 48-hour period for illnesses.
While Embrace has an accident-only plan for pets who enroll at age 15 or above, ASPCA’s accident-only plan is available for any pet owner who doesn’t want illness coverage, regardless of the animal's age.
ASPCA’s claim processing may be a little slower than Embrace’s — up to 30 days instead of 10 to 15 business days. Read our ASPCA pet insurance review to learn more.
Coverage options | Embrace | ASPCA |
|---|---|---|
Deductible | $100 to $1,000 per year. | $100, $250 or $500. |
Reimbursement | 70%, 80% or 90%. | 70%, 80% or 90%. |
Annual limit | $5,000 to unlimited. | $3,000 to $15,000 per year. (An unlimited option may be available; call the company for details.) |
NerdWallet’s pet insurance ratings reward companies for customer-first features and practices. Ratings are based on weighted averages of scores in several categories, including financial strength, coverage, plan options, discounts and more. Our “consumer experience” category looks at factors such as website transparency and how easy it is to file a claim. To calculate each insurer’s rating, we adjusted the scores to a curved 5-point scale. See our full pet insurance methodology.
These ratings are a guide, but we encourage you to shop around and compare several insurance quotes to find the best rate for you. NerdWallet does not receive compensation for any reviews. Read our editorial guidelines.
