How Did Pet Health Insurance Companies Get Started?
Pet health insurance companies got their start in 1982 when a company called Veterinary Pet Insurance sold a policy to help protect the health and welfare of one of the world's most famous pets, Lassie. Pet health insurance companies actually started as a response to the notion that good people were forced to put pets to sleep over curable conditions because those curable conditions cost too much money to get treated. It just seemed natural to the 700 veterinarians that helped to start that first pet health insurance company Veterinary Pet Insurance. People have people insurance companies so why can't pets have pet health insurance companies? The idea of pet health insurance companies blossomed from there.
Pet health insurance companies found the initial years rough going as pet owners just did not see the need to invest in pet insurance for their pets' health. The idea of pet health insurance companies actually did cross the big pond and make its way to England and it grew to the point where now the United States and England go hand in hand with offering pet health insurance for pets. But in the early days customers just did not see the importance. The idea initially caught on with some larger insurance companies like Firemen's Fund who tried to sell pet insurance but closed their pet insurance division in 1994 because they had sold less than 10,000 policies in 3 years. The only surviving pet health insurance company was Veterinary Pet Insurance and they somehow managed to make it through a time when other pet health insurance companies were opening and then closing within a twelve-month period.
Getting Some Big Names Involved Helped
In the late 1990's Procter & Gamble finally started to get involved with pet health insurance companies through their pet food division, Iams, and soon other pet insurance providers started to break through and make a stand in the industry. In 1997 Rhona Sutter established the Pet Protect Company and Russell Smith III started the Hartville Group. Both companies were started by people with extensive experience in the insurance industry and both started with very low key marketing plans and relied more on the push being offered by pet supplies companies than trying to over do any marketing plan. The idea was working and started catching on with people all throughout the United States and England.
In 2006 Pet Protect had to close their doors but the Hartville Group and Veterinary Pet Insurance are still going strong. There have been very few companies that have tried to sell pet insurance in the past thirty years with only about seven companies opening and closing since 1982. But more companies are starting to make a go of it in the pet insurance field and the hope is that people will see that there is more support for the idea of pet insurance and they will get on board with it.
