A per condition excess means you pay the excess when you claim for each new condition, rather than simply once per year.
Understanding how your excess works is one of the more important bits of small print in a pet insurance policy, and the difference between per condition and per year can make a meaningful difference to what you actually pay over time.
With a per condition excess, every new condition your pet develops that you make a claim for requires you to pay the excess again. So if your dog has three separate health issues in one year, you could be paying the excess three times.
That might sound expensive, but there's a flip side. If your pet has an ongoing condition that they need treatment for across multiple years, a per condition excess often means you pay it once for that condition and then it doesn't reset each year. The condition is already in the system, so to speak.
How this actually plays out depends on the specific policy wording, which is a policy detail to read carefully rather than assuming. Some policies define conditions quite narrowly, others more broadly, and that definition affects how many times you end up paying the excess.
"If your dog has three separate health issues in one year, with a per condition excess you could be paying the excess three times."
Compare this with a per year excess, where you pay once per policy year regardless of how many conditions you claim for. For a pet with multiple issues in one year, a per year excess could work out cheaper. For a pet with one ongoing long-term condition, the comparison is more nuanced.
Neither structure is automatically better. It really depends on your pet, their health history and what kind of claims you're likely to make.