Facts & Statistics on the US Pet Insurance Industry

There are multiple sources of data for much of the pet insurance market. We've collected these together here with references so that you can draw your own conclusions.

How Big Is the US Pet Insurance Industry

Embrace estimates that at the end of 2008 there were around 800,000 pet insurance policies in force with total direct written premium across the industry of $272 million¹. Written premiums grew at a compounded rate of 18% between 2003 and 2008.

Number of Pets with Pet Insurance

Embrace estimates that just 0.3% of the cat and dog population was insured in 2008. This calculation is very simple to do - it is the number of policies in force at the end of the year divided by the total cat and dog population². So 800,000 divided by approximately 154 million gives 0.52%.

This figure is much lower than the 3% of dogs and 1% of cats that others such as the American Pet Products Association estimate. Embrace believes that these numbers are overstated by survey biases because passionate pet parents respond to surveys at a higher rate than others surveyed.

At a high level though, it just isn't possible for 3% of the dog population and 1% of the cat population to be insured as this would imply a pet insurance industry far larger than reported data indicate.

How Fast Is the Pet Insurance Industry Growing?

Historically, pet insurance has grown 18% compounded annually from 2003 to 2008 while Packaged Facts assumes 25% going forward at the low end. At a 25% growth rate the pet insurance market will grow to around $664 million by 2012.

What Is the Market Share of Each Pet Insurance Company?

We estimate the market share at the end of 2008 of the three largest pet insurance companies to be VPI (64%), PetHealth Inc. (14%), The Hartville Group (12%). These market shares are based on written premium, not policies in force.

How Many Companies Sell Pet Insurance?

Embrace knows of ten companies actively selling pet insurance in the US:

1. Embrace Pet Insurance (Beachwood, Ohio)
2. Hartville Group (Canton, Ohio)
3. PetFirst Healthcare (Jeffersonville, Ind.)
4. PetHealth Inc. (Toronto, Canada)
5. PetPartners (Raleigh, N. Carolina)
6. Petplan USA (Philadelphia, Penn.)
7. Pets Best Insurance (Boise, Idaho)
8. Veterinary Pet Insurance (Brea, Calif.)
9. Trupanion Pet Insurance (Seattle, Wash.)
10. Purina Pet Insurance (San Antonio, Tex.)

Footnotes

¹ The policy in force (PIF) numbers are drawn from our internal estimates. The written premium numbers are taken from NAIC Yellow Book data, SEC filings, and SEDAR filings for the large pet insurance companies and from our best estimates for the small companies.

² AVMA 2007 U.S. Pet Ownership & Demographics Sourcebook