Purina Pet Insurance in the US

After Purina announced their pet insurance launch in Canada, I thought I'd check around for info on a possible Purina entry in the US and low and behold (pats on the back please!), I found an interesting pet insurance job posting on the Purina site (go to the Purina Career Site and use job search feature to search on the term "pet insurance" or specifically job number "nest-00006356"):

Medical and Underwriting Director
PurinaCare Nestle Purina PetCare Company

POSITION SUMMARY: The Medical & Underwriting Director will serve as key member of the executive management team. Plans and oversees all aspects of the organization's pre-sale and post-sale underwriting procedures as well as reviewing complicated claims, and high-dollar claims. This position is critical to the successful management of the company's claims loss ratio.

The rest of the description and requirements are on the Purina site.

So it looks like Purina will be coming to the US although I'm not sure when. I guess they won't be using VPI as their pet insurance employee benefit for long!

BTW, Purina bought a stake in Veterinary Pet Insurance (VPI) in 1998 but sold their stake later. Obviously, they never lost their interest in pet insurance after all these years.

Purina is not the only pet food company to get into pet insurance. IAMS owns about 9% of VPI it bought in 2003.

Wonder what Hills, Mars, and Royal Canin are going to do in response? Will everyone jump on the pet insurance bandwagon?

Update: I met up with the Purina Pet Insurance folks at the recent NAVC conference in Orlando and they tell me that they are launching in Spring 2008 so only a few months to go before they go live. Bring it on, I say!

Related Post:
Purina Starts to Rev the Pet Insurance Engine

Comments

[mike]

It's not clear to me if Purina is launching a new pet insurance company or this is simply a new channel for PetPlan Canada. Both PetPlan and Purina are underwritten by Securican and Randy Valpy is the CEO of both PetPlan Canada and Securican.