Insurance regulation in the US sits with the states, which means the rules covering your policy depend on where you live and not on any national pet insurance statute. That fact has two practical consequences: the protections you get vary, and the office that can actually do something about a bad claim experience is a state agency you have probably never contacted. This page explains what exists, what is widely misreported, and what to do when a claim goes wrong.
Who regulates pet insurance in the US?
Your state's department of insurance regulates pet insurance, licensing the insurer, reviewing its rate filings, and handling consumer complaints. There is no federal pet insurance regulator and no national policy standard.
The NAIC is not a regulator. It is the association through which state insurance commissioners coordinate, and it writes model laws that states may adopt, adapt, or ignore. It also collects industry data from insurers. Regulators in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia and the territories are its members, so its models carry weight, but the enforcement power stays local. Every state's regulator and its contact route is listed on our pet insurance by state pages.
Pet insurance is written as property and casualty business rather than as health insurance, which is why it sits outside the rules people associate with human health coverage. AM Best, reported by Insurance Journal in January 2025, put pet insurance at roughly 10 percent of inland marine premium.
What is the NAIC Pet Insurance Model Act?
Model 633 is a template state law for pet insurance that the NAIC adopted in 2022, at its Summer 2022 National Meeting in Portland, Oregon. It gives state legislatures a ready-made framework instead of each one drafting pet insurance rules from scratch.
A model act has no force on its own. A state has to enact it, in whole or in part, before any of it binds an insurer operating there. Until that happens, a pet policy in that state is governed by the state's general insurance code and by the contract itself. That is why reading your own policy document still matters more than any national summary, including this one.
How many states have adopted the NAIC model act?
This is the question that gets answered wrongly almost everywhere, so here is the careful version. Fourteen states have enacted pet insurance laws modeled on the NAIC's 2022 Pet Insurance Model Act, according to Insurify's June 2025 tally. The NAIC's own state adoption chart, updated in Summer 2025, does not list any state as having adopted the model in a substantially similar form.
Both statements are true because they measure different things. The NAIC's chart asks whether a state enacted the model substantially as written, and lists none. Insurify counts states that enacted pet insurance laws based on the model, which is a looser and more useful test for a buyer. What you should never read, or write, is the merged version: "fourteen states have adopted the NAIC model act." That sentence collapses two different measurements into one claim that neither source supports.
States Insurify lists as having pet insurance regulations based on the model act, with effective years, as of its June 2025 analysis:
| State | Effective year |
|---|---|
| California | 2014, amended 2024 |
| Delaware | 2023 |
| Maine | 2023 |
| Mississippi | 2023 |
| Louisiana | 2024 |
| Maryland | 2024 |
| Nebraska | 2024 |
| New Hampshire | 2024 |
| Ohio | 2024 |
| Pennsylvania | 2024 |
| Washington | 2024 |
| Montana | 2025 |
| Vermont | 2025 |
| Florida | 2026, approved 2025 |
Insurify is a commercial source rather than a regulator, so treat the list as a starting point and confirm your own state's status with its insurance department. Note also that California's law predates the model act by eight years, which is a reminder that state pet insurance rules did not begin with the NAIC.
What is a rate filing?
A rate filing is the document an insurer submits to a state regulator setting out the prices it intends to charge and the reasoning behind them. It covers the base rates and the factors that adjust them, such as species, breed, age and zip code, along with the deductible, reimbursement and limit options the insurer sells.
Once a rate is on file and in effect, the insurer charges it. It does not negotiate it with individual buyers, and it does not vary it by which website sent you. That is the mechanism behind the same-price rule below. Rate filings are also why premiums change at renewal in ways that feel arbitrary. A filed rate change applies to everyone in that class in that state, on top of your pet moving into an older age band.
Why does pet insurance cost the same through every channel?
Because the price is a filed rate, not a negotiated one. The premium an insurer charges for a specific pet profile in a specific state is the rate it filed with that state's regulator. That holds whether you buy direct, through a comparison site, or through a benefits portal at work.
This has a direct bearing on how a site like this one behaves. We earn affiliate commissions from the insurers we partner with, and that commission comes out of the insurer's marketing budget rather than being added to your premium. Buying through us costs you exactly what buying direct costs you. The full accounting, including which insurers pay us and which do not, is on our how we make money page. How we handle that conflict in our rankings is set out in our scoring methodology.
How do you complain to your state insurance regulator?
Start with the insurer, then escalate to your state department of insurance. Ask for the denial in writing, with the specific policy language it relies on, and file the insurer's internal appeal first. If that fails, file a complaint with your state's department of insurance, which every state accepts online.
A complaint file works best with five things attached: the declarations page, the itemized vet invoices, the claim number, the written denial, and the vet records the insurer relied on. The department then asks the insurer for a written response and reviews whether it followed its own contract and the state's claims handling rules.
Be clear on what this can and cannot do. A regulator can act on unfair claims practices, unreasonable delay, licensing problems and misleading advertising. It cannot order an insurer to pay for something the policy legitimately excludes. Most denials that owners escalate are contract outcomes rather than misconduct, usually a pre-existing condition or a waiting period. Both are worth understanding before you file: see why pet insurance claims get denied and pre-existing conditions explained.
What does regulation not protect you from?
Here is the honest limit of state oversight: most states have no pet-specific insurance statute at all. The contract you signed is close to the whole of the law that applies to your claim. Even in states with a law based on the model act, nothing requires an insurer to cover pre-existing conditions. Nothing caps how much a renewal premium can rise, beyond the general requirement that rates be filed.
Disclosure is also thinner than it looks. The NAIC collects pet insurance market conduct ratios from insurers covering claims closed without payment, claims paid beyond 60 days, denial reasons including pre-existing condition and waiting period, and the split between coverage types. It publishes no national benchmark values for any of them, and it has discontinued the loss ratio from that set of ratios. So the numbers that would let you compare insurers on claim behavior are collected and not released, which is why the pet insurance statistics we can publish stop where they do.
One more practical caution: free look periods exist, but their length is set by your policy and your state, so we publish no day count here. Read the number on your own declarations page. Terms used on this page are defined in the pet insurance glossary, and the timeline of how these rules arrived is in the history of pet insurance in the US.