HEALTH
Pet Insurance
Pet insurance and veterinary lobbyists squabble over “pre-existing condition” language in pet insurance law ahead of year’s first meeting
This afternoon, a group of state insurance regulators from across the country will meet online for the first time this year to resume their website’s stated goal: “to complete the development of a model law or guideline to establish appropriate regulatory standards for the pet insurance industry.”
Walmart Goes Nationwide for Pet Insurance, Leaving Its Own Partner at the Altar
America’s most popular retailer, Walmart, is adding to its recently launched suite of pet products and in-store pet services by teaming up with the most popular pet insurance provider, Nationwide…However, the new Walmart-Nationwide alliance may have come as a surprise to Walmart’s other pet insurance partner, Petplan – including Petplan CEO Paul Guyardo.
Walmart teams up with Petplan to take the plunge into pet insurance. Can Walmart take the pet insurance market mainstream?
Amid the Pandemic Puppy Boom, Walmart is taking the plunge into the U.S. pet health insurance market. The mega-retailer’s decision to get into the pet insurance business — still a niche industry in the U.S. with less than 5% of pets now covered by an insurance policy–may be a gamechanger. Can Walmart take the pet insurance market mainstream?
Trupanion to release third quarter earnings Thursday amid strong, increasingly competitive pandemic puppy economy
It’s been a busy and successful year for the U.S. pet insurance market at large, which has seen eight newcomers since 2017 alone: Wagmo (2020), Spot (started in 2019 with personality Cesar Milan as its figure head), Lemonade (July 2020), Prudent Pet (2018), TrustedPals (2019), Bivvy (2018), Companion Protect (2017), and Pumpkin (2019). The newcomers offer some of the most budget friendly options in the pet insurance market, but there are a staggering number of pitfalls neatly tucked away inside the fine print of the policies.
Dodo parent company Group Nine Media, Inc. takes minority stake in pet insurance company Petplan
Digital media company Group Nine Media Inc., which is backed by Discovery Inc. and owns The Dodo (“emotionally and visually compelling, highly sharable” animal content), has taken a minority stake in pet insurance company Petplan, the companies announced in a joint press release yesterday.
Pandemic Puppy Fever: Too Many Pets, Not Enough Vets, And More Health Insurance — For Dogs
Americans may have less money to spend, but what they have, they appear to be spending on their dogs and more notably, on pet health insurance, a relatively small but exponentially growing market as Americans discover that their dog’s health insurance policy can be better than any policy the human members of their families have access to….
Does Your Pet’s Health Insurance Cover SARS-CoV-2?
Now that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has confirmed two cases of household cats in New York with SARS-CoV-2 and, now, the reports of a family dog with the virus in North Carolina pending USDA confirmation, The Canine Review has asked the country’s major pet health insurance providers if and how each would cover SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics and treatment for cats and dogs.
Your dog’s health insurance can be better than yours, if you pick the right insurance.
VPI (or Veterinary Pet Insurance), founded in 1980, was the first company to sell pet insurance in the United States. In 2009, the company was purchased by Nationwide.
Nationwide/VPI has been and remains the largest and most popular pet insurer in the U.S. market, with 36.33% of the market share, according to NAPHIA.
While it may be the oldest and the most popular, TCR also found that it had some of the worst pitfalls of any insurer.
For starters, there appears to be a directive in place instructing customer service/insurance agents not to send even sample or boilerplate copies of the company’s pet insurance product to any individual who is not a policyholder. In other words, prospective customers are refused requests for sample policies. And it’s not as if the website makes it easy to find a copy of a policy.
