Pet insurance in Illinois

Illinois has no pet insurance law. A buyer is protected only by the policy itself and by the state’s general rules on cancelling insurance. According to NAPHIA, the industry association, Illinois was tenth among the states by number of insured pets in 2024, with 2.9% of insured pets in the US and 3.2% of premiums.

Why there is no law

In 2025 Illinois lawmakers introduced House Bill 3595, based on the NAIC Pet Insurance Model Act, a template law that state regulators wrote for states to copy. It would have required a disclosure document on the key policy terms and a 30-day free look, banned waiting periods for accidents and capped waiting periods for illness at 30 days. The House passed it 104 to 0 on 14 April 2026.

The Senate replaced the whole text. Amendment 1 of 18 May 2026 deleted every pet insurance section. Amendment 2 of 30 May turned the bill into a set of changes to unrelated laws. The governor signed it on 26 June 2026 as Public Act 104-0480, which says nothing about pet insurance. The NAIC’s page on state adoption lists Illinois as “No current activity”.

What this means for you:

• No one has to give you a disclosure document on the key policy terms. Trupanion and MetLife publish these documents for states with a law, but not for Illinois.
• Waiting periods have no limit. The insurer decides how long they are and whether a vet exam can waive them.
• No law stops an insurer from treating a condition it has already paid for as pre-existing (an illness the pet had before the policy) when you renew. If that protection exists, it is only in the policy wording.
• No law requires the insurer to prove that an exclusion applies.
• The Illinois Department of Insurance’s 2010 fact sheet on pet insurance is advice, not a rule. It says itself that it does not interpret Department policy.

The state’s general rules for personal property insurance still apply. The Department lists them in its checklist for insurers (Personal Inland Marine, version of 17 September 2026):

• Once a policy has been in force for 60 days, the insurer can cancel it for only six reasons: non-payment, a material misrepresentation, a breach of the policy terms, a measurable increase in the risk, loss of reinsurance, or a ruling by the Director of Insurance. Paying claims is not one of them.
• Refusing to renew is different. The law requires at least 30 days’ notice with the reason. It gives no list of allowed reasons; it only bans a few, such as the end of the insurer’s contract with your agent.
• An insurer that changes deductibles or coverage for a whole line of policies must give 60 days’ notice before renewal.
• Arbitration must be voluntary: you keep the right to sue.

Nobody approves the rates

In Illinois, pet insurers do not file their rates. The rule 50 Ill. Adm. Code 754 says rates and rules for personal inland marine insurance, the category that includes pet insurance, do not have to be filed. So Illinois has no rate filings, no regulator decision on the size of an increase and no public loss ratio (the share of premium paid out in claims). Florida and California have all three.

Insurers file only their policy forms, through the SERFF system, no later than the day they start using them. By law every filing is public (215 ILCS 5/404). You can read them in SERFF Filing Access (serff-sfa.naic.org/serff/sfa/home/IL). That address did not load on 17 October 2026 and has worked again since 19 October. If a document is not there, you can request it under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) through the Department’s website.

Independence American, the insurer behind Spot, ASPCA, Figo and Pets Best, shows what is there. Since January 2024 it has made 9 pet insurance filings in Illinois (two of them for companion horses), and all nine are policy forms and amendments to them. None of them is a rate filing (checked 19 October 2026).

The policies themselves allow the price to change at renewal:

• Spot and ASPCA: “Coverage and rates are subject to change at renewal.”
• Fetch can change the premium, the annual limit, your share of the bill, the deductible and any term at renewal.
• Figo raises premiums with age, with veterinary inflation and for “other actuarial changes”. It gives notice of changes 60 days before renewal.
• Healthy Paws raises premiums for all policyholders together to follow veterinary costs. Its Illinois amendment allows that only on the policy anniversary, with 60 days’ notice.

What Illinois policies say

We read the Illinois sample policies that Spot, ASPCA, Fetch, Figo, Pets Best and Healthy Paws publish on their websites. Without a law, some terms are stricter here than the same insurers’ terms in Florida and California.

Waiting periods for accidents. Spot and ASPCA (form PET-P-20000-IL-1024) wait 14 days for accidents, the same as for illness. In Florida and California the same insurer removed that wait. Anything that happens in those 14 days becomes pre-existing: it can be covered later only once it is cured and free of symptoms and treatment for 180 days, and never if it is a knee ligament or chronic condition. Healthy Paws waits 15 days, Pets Best 3 days and Figo 1 day. Fetch covers accidents from day one, but an injury “from normal activity” only after 15 days.

Joints and ligaments. Figo makes dogs wait 6 months for orthopedic conditions, even a fracture from an accident. A vet’s orthopedic exam can waive the wait only if the form reaches Figo within 30 days. Pets Best waits 6 months for cruciate ligament problems; in Florida it waits 30 days. Healthy Paws waits 12 months for hip dysplasia and never covers it for pets enrolled at 6 or older. Fetch excludes for life any orthopedic condition that appears in the first 180 days.

An exam does not waive the wait. The Illinois forms of Spot, ASPCA and Fetch have no clause that waives the waiting period after a vet exam. Their California forms do.

An exam can work against you. Fetch requires a first full exam, and anything the vet records at that exam is excluded. Healthy Paws requires a full exam in the 12 months before the policy starts or in its first 15 days; for pets 6 or older, in the 30 days before or the first 15 days. Until there is one, Healthy Paws pays nothing.

Pre-existing conditions. Healthy Paws counts anything “detectable by a routine physical exam”, with no time limit. Pets Best’s definitions call a condition present if you or your vet could have noticed its signs, even if the medical record does not mention them. Fetch treats the owner as a “verifiable source” on when signs began. The Spot, Fetch and Pets Best policies say a condition already covered does not become pre-existing at renewal. Figo’s Illinois form has no such sentence.

Short deadlines. Fetch tells you to see a vet within 48 hours of the first signs. Fetch takes claims up to 90 days after treatment, Figo and Pets Best 180 days, Spot 270 days. If Fetch asks for documents and does not get them within 270 days, it closes the claim for good.

Worse terms after a claim. At Fetch you cannot raise your coverage once you have made any claim. At Healthy Paws you cannot lower your deductible after a claim. After 50 paid claims Fetch can withdraw a discount and offer lower coverage. Fetch can refuse to renew over a “material change in … loss experience”. On the other hand, Pets Best says your claims do not change your premium, and Healthy Paws says they do not change your coverage, share of the bill or deductible.

Repeat incidents are excluded. After three similar incidents (a swallowed object, bite wounds, a car injury) Figo treats them as “preventable” and stops paying. Pets Best does not pay if the same kind of incident happened twice in the 18 months before treatment, even before the policy started.

Changing coverage means a new policy. At Pets Best, raising the limit cancels the old policy and starts a new one, so anything already in the medical record becomes pre-existing. At Spot and ASPCA a change can count as a “new enrollment” with new waiting periods. At Fetch an increase restarts the waiting period and the pre-existing check.

Tests for older pets. At renewal, Fetch and Figo require dogs 8 or older and cats 10 or older to follow the vet’s advice on senior screening.

Before you buy in Illinois

1. Ask for the full Illinois sample policy, not a summary. Compare the waiting periods for accidents and orthopedic conditions.
2. Check that the policy says a covered condition will not become pre-existing at renewal.
3. Choose the limit and deductible at the start: raising them later means a new pre-existing check.
4. Keep every notice of a premium change. No one reviews Illinois rates, so this is the only way to track how your price grows.
5. Complaints about a denied claim go to the Illinois Department of Insurance, online on its File a Complaint page (idoi.illinois.gov) or with its property insurance complaint form.