MetLife expands pet insurance benefits to include virtual vet visits

Is telehealth going to the dogs? In a way.

Through MetLife’s new pet insurance benefit, employers will be able to provide employee pet parents with access to veterinary telehealth services, roll over benefits, family plans for coverage of more than one pet and grief counseling. Additionally, employees switching from one insurance provider to MetLife will not be denied if their dog or cat has a preexisting condition, an exclusive perk of the employee benefit.

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“We wanted to make sure that pet parents have every reason to say yes to pet health insurance,” says Katie Blakeley, vice president and head of MetLife pet insurance. “If your pet has a condition, whether allergies or something more significant like cancer or diabetes, we will continue to offer coverage for those specific conditions. That's incredibly impactful, not only for pet parents themselves, but also for our employer customers.”

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MetLife works with over 500 employers to provide pet insurance benefits to more than six million employees across the U.S, but pet insurance benefits are offered by just 15% of employers, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. Millennials and Gen Z are making up the bulk of today’s workforce, and the trending priorities of these generations have shifted from family planning and buying homes to pet adoption and paying off student loans.

Approximately 1.6 million pets were adopted during the pandemic in 2020, according to data from Shelter Animals Count, a nonprofit organization that tracks data relating to animals in shelters. These pets have helped employees combat loneliness, depression and anxiety during COVID-19.

And while the pandemic saw a boom in pet adoptions, it also resulted in younger employees becoming more resolved in their decisions to put off or forgo having children: a quarter of older millennials say they decided to wait longer to have children because of the pandemic, according to a recent survey conducted by The Harris Poll for CNBC Make It.

The combination of those two trends means pet parents are more passionate than ever about caring for their animals. And increasingly, employees are looking to employers to provide benefits that support the health of their family members — whether they have two legs or four.