Waving The Pet Insurance Flag

The online investors' portal, Wall Street Savant, yesterday began following the profile of Vsurance, a developing online pet insurer and pet health information service. Vsurance has been frantically waving the Union Jack infront of investors and pointing it at the paltry 4% of US pet owners who bother to insure their animals. "Health insurance for pets is booming in the United Kingdom," says the company.

Pet insurance is one of few areas within the pet industry where the UK is showing America the way.

Within the more affluent UK pet owners group, pet insurance enjoys a healthy 43% take-up, (Datamonitor [Oct 2007]). Whilst growth of the combined UK population of cats and dogs has come to a standstill, penetration of pet insurance has not yet stalled. Take-up of UK cat and dog insurance across the whole pet owner range is currently touching 25%, (MyFinances [Mar 2007]). Datamonitor reported 18% penetration in 2005.

..for this reason analysts are signalling further penetration as the route to future UK market growth.

For a long time, as with the current situation in the US, the UK pet insurance market remained quite stagnant and unexploited. One company, Petplan (Allianz) was virtually allowed carte blanche to develope its business model. This early entrant is now the leading provider in the UK.

Vinsure reported last week 62% of US households own at least one pet, and 81% of pet owners consider their pets to be family members. The humanisation of animals is a trend in which the US does lead the way. It could prove to be a key tendancy in developing that country's pet health insurance market, (particularly if insurers persist in comparing the plight of US pets to that of those in the UK).

As and when the US market begins to move, the positioning of early entrants will be interesting to watch.