Pet insurance in the US has a short, well-documented history and a long, poorly documented prehistory. The American story starts on a single dated day in 1982 and is traceable from there through public filings and association reports. What came before it, in Europe, is repeated everywhere online and sourced almost nowhere. This page keeps those two categories apart.
When was the first pet insurance policy sold in the US?
The first US pet health insurance policy was issued in 1982 by Veterinary Pet Insurance. UPI reported on 7 April 1982 that VPI was the first company of its kind licensed by the California Department of Insurance. Nationwide, which now owns the business, dates the announcement press conference to 8 April 1982.
The first policyholder was Lassie, the collie of television fame, owned by trainer Rudd Weatherwax. Both UPI's contemporaneous report and Nationwide's own fortieth-anniversary account name her. A celebrity first customer was a publicity decision, and it worked: the story is still the single most repeated fact in the category.
What did that first policy actually cover?
The 1982 policy reimbursed 80 percent of usual, customary and reasonable medical fees after a deductible, per UPI's report at the time. That structure is recognizable today. Reimbursement percentages, deductibles and a usual-and-customary cap are all still standard machinery, and all three are defined in the pet insurance glossary.
UPI reported premiums starting at $24 for accident cover and $44 for the wider plan, averaging under $5 a month. Those are 1982 dollars for a 1982 product, and they are historical record rather than a price comparison. Our own dated premium sampling is pending first quote run.
Did pet insurance start in the US?
No, the US was late rather than first. European insurers were writing animal coverage before the US market opened in 1982, and every account of the category's origins points across the Atlantic.
Here is the honest limitation on this page: specific founding dates for the first European policies circulate widely online, and we have not verified any of them against a primary source we would publish. So this page does not print one. An undated claim, or a date repeated from other content sites, is worth less than an admission that we do not have it. If we source a primary record, it will appear here with its citation and the date we verified it.
Why did the US market take decades to grow?
The US market grew slowly for its first twenty-five years because the product had no distribution and no urgency behind it. Nationwide reports that it began offering pet insurance as a voluntary employee benefit in 1999. That channel put the product in front of people who were not already shopping for it. Nationwide now reports more than 1.1 million pets protected, a company figure rather than an audited one, and it remains the principal insurer for exotic pets. Its full record is in our Nationwide pet insurance review.
The bigger constraint was cost. When a routine vet bill was small, insurance solved a problem few owners felt. Veterinary services inflation changed that: BLS data reported by PetfoodIndustry in March 2026 shows veterinary services CPI up 55.5 percent cumulatively since 2019, a seven-year average of 6.5 percent a year, the highest of any pet spending category.
How fast has pet insurance grown recently?
US enrollment roughly doubled between 2020 and 2025, from 3,101,956 insured pets to 6.98 million, per NAPHIA's State of the Industry Reports. The premium line grew faster still.
| Year end | US pets insured | US gross written premium |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 3,101,956 | $2 billion |
| 2021 | 3,970,535 | not reported here |
| 2022 | 4,849,540 | not reported here |
| 2023 | 5,676,776 | $3.9 billion |
| 2024 | 6,405,541 | $4.74 billion |
| 2025 | 6.98 million | about $5.68 billion to $5.7 billion |
Sources: NAPHIA State of the Industry Reports 2024, 2025 and 2026, reported via NAPHIA's own data pages, AVMA and dvm360. US gross written premium was $1.6 billion in 2019, per Insurance Journal in January 2025. NAPHIA put the five-year combined growth rate in written premium at 20.8 percent in its 2025 report.
Two details matter more than the totals. First, growth decelerated sharply: US enrollment rose 20.7 percent in 2024 and 9.0 percent in 2025. Second, premium grew 19.7 percent in 2025 against that 9.0 percent enrollment growth, which means existing policies got more expensive faster than new ones were sold. The full series with sources is on our US pet insurance statistics page.
When did regulators write rules for pet insurance?
The NAIC adopted its Pet Insurance Model Act, Model 633, in 2022, at the NAIC Summer 2022 National Meeting in Portland, Oregon. Forty years passed between the first US policy and the first model law written specifically for the product.
Adoption since then needs care. Insurify's June 2025 tally counts 14 states with pet insurance laws based on the model, the earliest being California in 2014 and amended in 2024. The NAIC's own state adoption chart, updated in Summer 2025, does not list any state as having adopted Model 633 in a substantially similar form. Those two statements are both accurate and they answer different questions. The distinction is explained fully in how pet insurance is regulated.
What has gone wrong in the market lately?
Rising veterinary costs have pushed insurers to act, and 2024 produced two events worth recording. Nationwide non-renewed approximately 100,000 policies in spring 2024, citing veterinary cost inflation, as reported by AM Best via Insurance Journal and by Insurance Business. ManyPets exited the US market in late 2024. Neither is a failure of the product, but both show that a policy is a yearly contract rather than a lifetime guarantee, which is why continuous coverage matters so much once a condition exists. That link between a coverage gap and a permanent exclusion is covered in pre-existing conditions explained.
Money continued to arrive at the same time. JAB Holdings grew US direct premiums 79.9 percent year on year in 2025, per Insurance Business. AM Best reported the industry's net combined ratio under the breakeven point in both 2024 and 2025, indicating profitable underwriting. Where that money goes is broken down in how pet insurance companies make money.
Where does the US market stand now?
Four decades after Lassie, 4.27 percent of US pets carry insurance, per NAPHIA's 2026 report. That is the number that puts the history in proportion: a category that has doubled in five years and still leaves more than 95 percent of US cats and dogs uninsured. The current lineup of insurers writing that business is listed in our pet insurance companies directory. The product's mechanics have changed less since 1982 than the price has, as how pet insurance works shows.