Evelyn PimplaskarEditor-in-Chief, Director of Content
10+ years in insurance and personal finance content
30+ years in media, PR, and content creation
Evelyn leads Insurify’s content team. She’s passionate about creating empowering content to help people transform their financial lives and make sound insurance-buying decisions.
John leads Insurify’s copy desk, helping ensure the accuracy and readability of Insurify’s content. He’s a licensed agent specializing in home and car insurance topics.
Published July 31, 2024 at 5:00 PM PDT | Reading time: 3 minutes
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New York pet owners may soon see a change in their pet insurance policies. Legislators recently passed a law that establishes industry standards in the state and gives New York’s Department of Financial Services oversight of the industry.
The law requires pet insurers operating in New York to follow newly established disclosure obligations, prohibits waiting periods for accident coverage, and bans marketing wellness programs as part of pet insurance or as a requirement for buying pet insurance.
“This bill ensures that there are standards within the [pet insurance] industry that have already been adopted in other states,” Assemblywoman Pamela J. Hunter, who sponsored the bill, told Insurify. “For example, pet owners might be marketed a pet wellness product and not understand that there is no coverage for veterinary procedures. This legislation ensures a level of quality for pet insurance and provides for easily understood disclosures on what a policy covers.”
The bill passed both houses of the state legislature in the legislative session that ended in June and is waiting on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.
New law’s provisions
The new law establishes uniform definitions for pet insurance terms and a number of disclosure requirements, including whether a policy excludes pre-existing conditions, hereditary disorders, congenital anomalies, or chronic conditions.
Additionally, the legislation:
Requires insurers to disclose waiting periods, deductibles, co-insurance amounts, annual or lifetime policy limits, and whether an insurer reduces coverage or raises premiums based on claim history, pet age, or a change in location.
Provides a 30-day refund period for new policies.
Bans waiting periods for accident coverage and limits waiting periods for illnesses and orthopedic conditions to 30 days. Insurers must also provide a waiting period waiver if the insured pet has a medical exam.
Prohibits requiring a medical exam for policy renewals.
Requires insurers to disclose their benefit schedules and how they calculate usual and customary fees if those are part of their reimbursement policy.
Bans insurers from marketing wellness programs as part of pet insurance. Insurers also can’t make participation in a wellness plan a condition for getting pet insurance.
New York is among the first states to begin regulating pet insurance, North American Pet Health Insurance Association (NAPHIA) spokesperson Samantha Bell told Insurify.
Impact on pet owners
Hunter, who currently serves as vice president of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL), said New York’s law follows model legislation from the NCOIL. “Uniform standards will be good for the pet insurance market and should improve policy availability, pricing, and quality,” she said.
NAPHIA believes “that effective regulation will provide standards leading to increased certainty for pet-owning consumers, policy-holders, and the pet insurance marketplace,” Bell said. “Regulation can help grow the marketplace for pet insurance because it fosters an environment that leads to increased competition and the development of more innovative pet insurance products to suit the needs of many different pet owners and their pets.”
At the end of 2023, New York had the second-largest number of insured pets in the U.S., representing 7.5% of all pets insured, NAPHIA data shows.
What’s next
Gov. Hochul has until the end of 2024 to sign legislation passed during the 2024 legislative session, which ended in June. The act will go into effect 180 days after the governor signs it. The new regulations will apply to all new, renewed, and modified or amended pet insurance policies in New York.
“I encourage all cat and dog owners to get pet insurance,” Hunter said. “A bigger pool will help in assessing and mitigating risks. Most pet owners, like myself, see their pets as a member of their family. We would never want our children or other loved ones to go uninsured, and pet insurance is an easy way to have the same peace of mind when it comes to our pets.”
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Evelyn PimplaskarEditor-in-Chief, Director of Content
Evelyn Pimplaskar is Insurify’s director of content. With 30-plus years in content creation – including 10 years specializing in personal finance – Evelyn’s done everything from covering volatile local elections as a beat reporter to building fintech content libraries from the ground up.
Before joining Insurify, she was editor-in-chief at Credible, where she launched and developed the lending marketplace’s media partnership’s content initiative and managed the restructuring of the editorial team to enhance content production efficiency. Formerly, as tax editor for Credit Karma, Evelyn built a library of more than 300 educational articles on federal and state taxes, achieving triple-digit year-over-year growth in e-files from organic search.
Her early career included work as a content marketer, vice president and managing officer of a boutique public relations agency, chief copy editor for 14 weekly Forbes publications, reporting for large and mid-sized daily newspapers, and freelancing for the Associated Press.
Evelyn is passionate about creating personal finance content that distills complex topics into relatable, easy-to-understand stories. She believes great content helps empower readers with the information they need to make important personal finance decisions.
John leads Insurify’s copy desk, helping ensure the accuracy and readability of Insurify’s content. He’s a licensed agent specializing in home and car insurance topics.
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