Pet insurance in Arizona

What the law guarantees

Nothing specific to pet insurance. Arizona has no pet insurance law, and the NAIC’s page on its Pet Insurance Model Act, a template law that state regulators wrote for states to copy, does not list Arizona. That means:

• there is no required Insurer Disclosure of Important Policy Provisions, the summary that buyers in Florida and California get;
• there are no shared definitions of a pre-existing condition (an illness the pet had before the policy), a waiting period or a renewal: each insurer writes its own;
• there is no cap on waiting periods and no right to have one waived by a vet exam;
• there is no rule that a condition the policy already covered stays covered at renewal;
• there is no rule that the insurer must prove an exclusion applies.

The policy wording decides everything. Only general rules apply: a rate must not be excessive, inadequate or unfairly discriminatory (A.R.S. §20-383), and a policy form must not be ambiguous, misleading or deceptive (§20-398).

Rates and policies do not have to be filed

In 2013 the director of the Department of Insurance signed Order 13A-071-INS. It exempts pet insurance rates and policy forms from filing with the department. The main exception: an insurer that has held an Arizona certificate of authority (licence) for less than two years must still file. The order is still in force: the Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions (DIFI) repeats it in its 2022 filing instructions and asks insurers not to send what they do not have to file.

In practice:

• Trupanion filed a policy form in 2020 and got the answer “Exempt by Statute”. Lemonade got the same answer, citing the order, in 2021.
• Independence American (Pumpkin, Spot, ASPCA, Pets Best, Figo) last filed in Arizona in 2015. For Embrace, Fetch, Healthy Paws and Nationwide we found no current filing at all.
• The Arizona prices, rating factors and policy wordings of these companies are not published anywhere. That is why the site shows no price or coverage score for them here.

The same order takes pet insurance policies out of Article 14 (A.R.S. §20-1671 and the sections after it), which requires 45 days’ notice before a commercial policy is not renewed. For pet policies, the law sets no notice period.

How rates change: use and file

Arizona is a “use and file” state (A.R.S. §20-385): an insurer starts using a new rate and files it within 30 days. DIFI does not approve the rate. It answers “Acknowledged” and may come back to it later if the rate breaks the law. The law treats a rate as not excessive while there is competition in the market, and competition is presumed unless the director decides otherwise after a hearing (§20-383).

Of the insurers we track, only MetLife Pet (Metropolitan General Insurance Company) files current Arizona rates. Its filing META-134597334:

• was submitted on 22 July 2025, and DIFI answered “Acknowledged” three days later;
• raised rates by an average 37% from 1 September 2025, for new policies and renewals alike;
• rested on Arizona data that called for +41%: from January 2023 to March 2025, claims adjusted for rising vet costs came to 93% of premium against a planned 66%;
• applied to MetLife’s 8,742 Arizona policyholders, with an expected average premium of $868 a year.

Nine months earlier, in December 2024, MetLife changed its rates with no overall effect (filing META-134029781). Arizona data then pointed to +9.1%.

For the reference dog, a French Bulldog in Phoenix (ZIP prefix 850) with no annual limit, a $1,000 deductible and 90% reimbursement, the new rating factors are about 41% higher than the old ones. The base rate went from $59.11 to $81.94 and the area factor from 0.715 to 0.763. Before, all of Arizona paid the same; now ZIP prefixes 850 and 852 (Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa, Tempe, Chandler) pay the most, together with 864 and 865 in the north-west and north-east of the state; Tucson (857) pays 12% less and Flagstaff (860) 22% less.

What can change at renewal

MetLife’s Arizona rate manual has three rules worth knowing before you buy:

• An increase at renewal is capped at 50% for one year; after that the full rate applies. Any change to the policy cancels the cap.
• The insurer may apply a “trend factor” of up to 15% a year “to account for industry trends and inflation”. The rule is already in the manual, so no new filing is needed. California does not allow this: Fetch’s national rule is marked “Not Allowed in California”.
• Each policy renews “at the then current approved rates and options available”, and coverage options are not guaranteed beyond the current term.

Nationwide has already used the fact that a policy lasts only a year. In August 2025 a dog owner in Gilbert got a letter saying her dog’s Whole Pet policy would not be renewed; according to the letter, the plan would no longer be offered in Arizona. She told AZFamily that the only replacement offered would exclude her dog’s pre-existing conditions. In a court filing in a class action over the non-renewals, Nationwide said its contracts provided coverage only for one-year terms, not the life of the pets.

Moving to another insurer always means a new policy. Anything in the vet record can become a pre-existing condition. No state, Arizona included, makes the new insurer cover it.

Finding a filing in SERFF

Arizona’s filings are public in SERFF Filing Access (portals.naic.org/serff-filing-access?state=AZ). Click Begin Search and accept the terms.

Search by the company code (Company CoCode), not the brand name: 39950 for MetLife, 26581 for Independence American, 12190 for American Pet Insurance (Trupanion), 16023 for Lemonade. Pet insurance filings are labelled “09.0004 Pet Insurance Plans”.

Open the filing number. The Filing Outcome block shows the decision: “Acknowledged” means the rate was noted, “Exempt” means it did not have to be filed. The “Generate ZIP to download” button packs every document into one archive. Look for the percentage change in the actuarial memorandum, the calculation in the “Rate Increase Support Exhibit” and the factors in the rate manual.