Refer a Friend Insurance UK: Which Schemes Actually Pay in 2026?

Recommend your insurer to a friend and a good number of UK companies will hand you a gift card for it — anything from a fiver to £100. The schemes are real, the money is real, and almost nobody claims it, mostly because the rules are buried in terms and conditions and one wrong click voids the lot.

We checked the live refer a friend schemes across the UK insurance market in September 2026 — car, van, breakdown, pet, health, life, travel, sport and business cover. Here is what each one pays, what your friend gets, and the small print that stops people getting paid.

Refer a friend insurance schemes at a glance

Rewards are paid as gift cards or policy credit, not cash, and almost all are subject to waiting periods and caps. Details for each scheme are below.

How refer a friend insurance schemes work

The mechanics are near identical across the market. You log in to your account, generate a unique referral link or code, and send it to someone. They click your link, buy a policy direct from the insurer, and keep it long enough to clear a validation window. Both of you then get an email with a gift card code.

Insurers run these schemes because a referred customer is far cheaper to acquire than one bought through a price comparison site, and tends to stay longer. That is also why almost every scheme insists the purchase comes through your link rather than a comparison site — the insurer is paying you instead of the aggregator.

Three things are true of nearly every scheme: the reward is a voucher, not cash; there is a waiting period of anything from two weeks to four months; and the referred person must be a genuinely new customer.

The best refer a friend insurance schemes in the UK

Car and van insurance

Admiral runs the widest scheme in the UK market and pays on a sliding scale by product: £75 for MultiCover or MultiCar, £60 for single car, £50 for van, £30 for home, pet or landlord cover, £20 for annual travel and £10 for single trip travel. There is no cap on how many people you refer. The reward arrives as an Amazon.co.uk gift card, M&S voucher or PayPal transfer within 120 days of the policy purchase. Critically, the referral is void if your friend buys through a price comparison website, renews rather than buys new, or uses a previously saved quote. Note that Admiral pays the referrer only — your friend gets nothing extra.

Marshmallow is the most generous of the car-only insurers, paying £50 in Amazon vouchers to each of you. Your friend must keep the policy active for at least 21 days, must not be a previous Marshmallow customer, and you need an active policy yourself at the point they buy. Rewards land within 10 weeks of the conditions being met.

Hastings Direct advertises a reward worth up to £75, and unusually it applies across the whole range — car, multi car, telematics, home, van and bike — rather than car alone. Your friend has to get a quote and buy through your unique link on the Hastings website, and the policy is validated before the reward is released. Hastings does not publish the per-product breakdown behind that “up to”, so check what your friend’s policy type actually earns before you promise anyone anything. As with Admiral, the reward goes to the referrer only.

Temporary and learner car insurance

Veygo and Cuvva both give £10 each, but as policy credit rather than a gift card — useful only if you are going to buy again. Veygo requires a minimum spend of £11, excludes subscription and telematics products, allows up to 30 new customers a month, and takes up to 30 days to apply the credit. Cuvva applies £10 off each side on your friend’s first temporary car policy.

Breakdown cover

RAC pays £25 in Amazon gift cards to each of you, issued 60 days after your friend’s policy starts and once two monthly payments (or one annual payment) have gone through. You can refer a maximum of 12 people, European and Business Breakdown Cover are excluded, and the gift card link expires 60 days after issue — miss it and it cannot be reissued.

The AA pays £20 each as an Amazon or M&S e-gift card, up to 12 times per calendar year, emailed within 12 weeks. The AA is stricter than most: you and your friend must live at different addresses, the sign-up must be online rather than through a contact centre, your friend cannot already be broken down at the roadside when they join, and your own cover must have been bought direct from the AA rather than through a bank or car manufacturer package.

Pet insurance

Animal Friends is the most generous pet scheme we found: a voucher of at least £40 to each of you, redeemable across a range of retailers. The policy has to be your friend’s first with Animal Friends and must stay live for 60 days with premiums up to date. Accident Only policies are excluded. The catch to watch is unusually strict: your friend is ineligible if they have run a pet insurance quote through a price comparison site such as GoCompare or Compare the Market in the previous 30 days. If they have been shopping around, wait it out.

Agria gives £20 Amazon gift cards to both sides. Your friend must buy an annual policy and keep it for 90 days; rewards are emailed by day 120. Only existing Agria customers can refer.

Petplan takes a different shape: you get £20 in M&S vouchers and your friend gets two months’ free insurance. It is phone-only — your friend has to call and quote the code PETFRIEND along with your name and policy number — and people at the same address cannot refer each other. Vouchers are sent once the free months have passed and the first payment has been made.

ManyPets runs a scheme through the My Account area, with the reward released once your friend’s policy has been active for 30 days. The value is not published on its public pages, so check inside your account before you assume a figure.

Health and life insurance

Vitality pays the largest reward we found: £100 each, as an Amazon.co.uk or John Lewis & Partners gift card. The conditions are the tightest too. The plan must be a personal health or life plan bought direct from Vitality (not through a broker), the premium must be at least £25 a month, and both plans must stay active with premiums paid for 90 days. Your friend has 60 days from the plan start to confirm their membership number and link the referral. You can claim up to 10 gift cards per calendar year.

Protect Line offers a £100 high street voucher to existing life insurance customers, with no stated limit on how many people you refer. The referred policy has to stay active for three months.

Travel insurance

Staysure is the standout for anyone who travels with a group. You get a £10 Love2Shop gift card per referral and your friend gets 20% off their first policy. The caps are unusually high: up to 10 gift cards in 24 hours, and up to 75 successful referrals or £1,000 in rewards in any rolling 12 months. Cards are issued 60 days after purchase, and the 20% discount excludes medical screening costs and add-ons.

Business and commercial insurance

Simply Business pays £50 to you and £25 to your friend as an Amazon, John Lewis or Microsoft gift card, with no cap on referrals and an email within 60 days of the policy starting. For anyone in a trade with a network of other self-employed people, this is one of the easier schemes to work.

INSHUR covers private hire, courier and food delivery drivers and pays £50 each in Amazon gift cards, capped at £250 a month and £3,000 a year. Annual policies only. There is a two-week validation period, and the gift card link is valid for 90 days.

Zego pays £50 each on annual policies and £10 each on 30-day policies, released after your friend’s 14-day cooling-off period. Pay-as-you-go and 7-day policies are excluded, you can earn a maximum of 10 rewards a month, and rewards themselves expire three months after being earned.

PolicyBee pays £20 to each of you on its business insurance, and does it the old-fashioned way — the thank-you is posted to you both once the policy has been active for a month. No stated cap on referrals. Your friend either uses your link or mentions your name when they call.

The small print that voids a referral

Most failed claims come down to the same handful of mistakes:

Buying through a comparison site. Admiral voids the referral outright if the policy was bought via an aggregator, and the same logic applies elsewhere. The purchase has to come through your unique link.

Renewals and old quotes. A renewal is not a new policy. Nor, in Admiral’s case, is a previously saved quote. Your friend usually also has to be genuinely new — INSHUR requires no policy in the past 12 months, Petplan looks back 24 months.

Cancelling too early. Every scheme has a minimum survival period: 21 days at Marshmallow, 30 at ManyPets, 60 at RAC and Staysure, 90 at Agria, Vitality and Protect Line.

Same-household rules. The AA requires you to live at different addresses. Petplan bars referrals between people at the same address. Referring your partner usually does not work.

Letting the voucher expire. RAC gives you 60 days to claim, INSHUR 90 days, and Zego rewards lapse after three months. Diarise it.

Excluded products. RAC excludes European and Business Breakdown, Zego excludes pay-as-you-go and 7-day cover, INSHUR excludes its Flex product, and Veygo excludes subscription and telematics policies.

Are refer a friend insurance rewards taxable in the UK?

This is the part almost every referral guide gets wrong, so it is worth being precise.

HMRC draws a line between a discount on your own purchase and a payment for introducing someone else. Its Business Income Manual (BIM100210) states that a customer who is not carrying on a trade and simply takes their business to one company rather than another “is not providing that concern with a recognisable service” — so cashback on your own policy is not taxable. But it goes on to say that where someone is paid for introducing another customer, those payments can be chargeable as miscellaneous income, provided they are not gratuitous and not already taxed elsewhere.

In practice, the £1,000 trading allowance covers casual and miscellaneous income for most people, so a couple of £50 vouchers a year is unlikely to create a tax bill. If you are referring at scale — and Staysure’s £1,000 annual cap or INSHUR’s £3,000 tell you some people do — it is worth a conversation with an accountant.

Is a referral reward worth more than switching?

Usually not, and it is worth saying plainly. A referral reward is a one-off. A cheaper policy is a saving that repeats every single year you hold it.

The trap is the one insurers are quietly relying on: staying put to protect a £25 voucher while your renewal quietly climbs. If your renewal price has gone up by more than the reward is worth, the voucher has cost you money. Referral schemes are best treated as a small bonus after you have satisfied yourself the policy is the right one on price and cover — never as the reason to buy it.

The one exception is where the reward genuinely lands on both sides and the price is already competitive. Marshmallow’s £50 each and Vitality’s £100 each are large enough to matter in a close comparison.

Specialist insurance: rarer schemes, but they exist

Referral schemes cluster around high-volume, mass-market products — car, pet, breakdown, travel. In specialist lines such as mobility scooter insurance, carers and PA insurance, self storage insurance and golf insurance they are much thinner on the ground. The customer base is smaller and the premiums are lower, so the marketing budget for £50 gift cards is not there.

There are exceptions. Surewise, which covers mobility scooters, carers and personal assistants, and self storage, pays £10 in Amazon gift cards to both sides. Your own policy has to have been running for at least 90 days before you can refer anyone, and the referred policy has to survive 90 days too. You can refer up to 15 people per code, subject to a £150 reward cap in any rolling 12 months. Your friend’s voucher is valid for one month from issue and yours for three months, so redeem promptly. Referral codes are in the My Account area.

Insure4Sport — which also trades as Insure4Golf — runs a scheme across its sports and golf insurance policies. You get a voucher redeemable at Amazon, Argos, Decathlon and others; your friend gets a discount on their policy. The value is tiered by what your friend spends — policies under £50 earn you a £5 voucher, and more above that, though Insure4Sport does not publish the full figure. Rewards arrive by email within 28 days of the policy starting and are valid for 90 days. You can earn up to 5 rewards in any 24 hours and 25 rewards, or £1,500 of value, per year. The 14-day cooling-off period has to pass first, and a cancelled policy voids the reward.

Set against the premiums in these markets, £10 is proportionally generous — it is a meaningful slice of a mobility scooter policy, where cover starts around £38 a year. It is still worth the same point made above: the gap between the cheapest and most expensive quote for near-identical specialist cover is routinely larger than any referral voucher on this page.

How to make sure your referral actually pays

1. Generate the link from your own account — do not use a code from a third-party referral site.

2. Send your friend the link and tell them to buy direct, not via a comparison site.

3. Check they qualify as a new customer and do not live at your address.

4. Note the validation window and the date the reward is due.

5. Check your spam folder around that date — rewards often come from a third-party fulfilment address, not the insurer.

6. Redeem the gift card promptly. Several schemes expire the claim link within 60 to 90 days.