Trupanion launches two pet insurance brands
In its 2020 shareholder letter, pet insurance provider Trupanion announced that 2020 marked the completion of its 5-year plan and dubbed the beginning of 2021 through 2025 as its 60-month plan. In it, it referenced two new brands: PHI Direct and Furkin.
“Our 60-month plan details how we plan to expand our insurance product lines to include PHI Direct and Furkin (our low and medium ARPU products, respectively), expand our geographies by entering Japan and Europe, as well as add a new monthly subscription pet food where we hope to verify our hypothesis that pets eating a healthy diet in the right amount of calories will be healthier.”
Nowadays, both brands are operational.
PHI Direct is available to Canadian pet owners and will be available to US pet owners later this year. It offers Fluff-free Pet Health Insurance™ – an introductory (read: affordable) pet insurance product starting at $10.19/month for cats and $15.20/month for dogs.
It offers two ‘Time-Limited’ policy options, Direct 5 or Direct 10, with annual benefit maximums of $5,000 or $10,000, respectively. With Time-Limited plans, any condition that a pet is treated for in the current policy year would not be covered in the next year of coverage. Upon renewal, PHI Direct members would continue to benefit from coverage for a host of new medical conditions and accidents that a pet may experience in the years to come.
Coverage is underwritten by Omega General Insurance Company and for what it’s worth, PHI Direct is also the first pet insurance offering in Canada to accept PayPal and Apple Pay, “underscoring its leading-edge in designing a new product for a new audience.”
Furkin Pet Insurance is also live in Canada with a name it hopes you’ll never ‘furget.’ Unlike PHI Direct, Furkin offers “serious protection;” meaning one large annual benefit – of up to $20,000 – with three different annual deductibles and its policy has no per condition limits and no lifetime limits on any eligible conditions. The other two perks (read: Policies & Perks) are around-the-clock telehealth support via Vetsdirect Limited and an app called Petriage. “Petriage is a dynamic mobile application which provides Furkin pet parents with instant, actionable information about their pet’s health. Petriage’s dog and cat symptom checker relies on powerful algorithms to deliver veterinarian-backed insight about a pet’s care and medical symptoms.”
Furkin policies are also underwritten by Omega General Insurance Company with plans to launch in the US later this year.
