In the interim reports of listed insurers, pet insurance appeared as a standalone line item for the first time. For example, ZhongAn Insurance reported pet insurance premium income of 691 million yuan in the first half of the year, up 22.7% year-on-year, having already served more than 1.61 million pet owners; Ping An of China recorded pet insurance premiums of 247 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate as high as 113.2%. PICC even directly placed pet insurance into its integrated "car + people + home" sales system.

At the same time, there are two sets of sharply contrasting figures. One is that domestic pet insurance premium scale soared from about 50 million yuan in 2020 to 3 billion to 3.5 billion yuan in 2025, a roughly 60-fold increase in five years. The other is that by the end of 2025, overall industry penetration was still hovering between 1% and 3%. Compared with mature markets such as Hong Kong and overseas, the mainland pet insurance market is still in the early stage of land-grabbing. Behind the phenomenon of high praise but weak adoption, what industry problems remain?

Full Landscape of Supply: Product Matrix and Differentiated Strategies

From the perspective of institution types, the players in the pet insurance market can be divided into three categories: the first is professional internet insurance companies relying on internet traffic advantages, the second is large comprehensive property and casualty insurance companies relying on traditional offline channels, and the third is internet platforms such as Ant Insurance, WeSure, and JD Finance.

First, professional internet insurance companies are the core of online customer acquisition. They are represented by ZhongAn Insurance and Cathay Property Insurance. Financial report data show that in 2025, ZhongAn's total pet insurance premiums approached 1.296 billion yuan, up 88.2% year-on-year; in the first half of 2026, premiums reached 691 million yuan, up 22.7% year-on-year, cumulatively serving more than 1.61 million pet owners, with about 18,000 offline partner pet medical stores. During the 2026 Asia Pet Expo, ZhongAn officially released its product matrix, including Zhongchongbao Pet Medical Insurance with zero deductible, unlimited claim frequency, and coverage including physical exams, deworming, and vaccines; Mengchong Anti-Cancer Insurance targeting tumor risks in senior pets; the first domestic parrot-specific insurance; and the embedding of pet medical protection into the employee benefits system through Zhongchongbao (Enterprise Edition).

Second, traditional property insurance giants focus more on ecosystem layout and offline networks. They are represented by Ping An Property Insurance, PICC Property Insurance, China Life Property Insurance, and China Continent Insurance. Financial report data show that Ping An Property Insurance's pet insurance premiums in 2025 were about 240 million yuan, and in the first half of 2026 it already achieved premium income of 247 million yuan, up 113.2% year-on-year. Its Ping An Chong Wuyou is a typical comprehensive protection product, with one policy covering three core liabilities: pet accident and disease medical care (sum insured 50,000 yuan), third-party medical liability (sum insured 50,000 yuan), and third-party death and disability liability (sum insured 150,000 yuan). At the same time, Ping An Property Insurance has established cooperation with more than 9,000 designated pet hospitals and 6,000 pet stores nationwide, and launched a comprehensive financial product portfolio supporting the binding of credit card consumption with pet insurance protection. PICC Property Insurance was an earlier player in this track, having jointly launched the first nationwide pet medical insurance product, Chonglebao, as early as 2014, and currently has incorporated pet insurance into its integrated "car + people + home" sales system.

The third category is internet platforms, namely Ant Insurance, WeSure, JD Finance, and other internet platforms, which are the terminal portals for reaching users. Such platforms differ from insurance companies that directly assume underwriting responsibility, and are more like product display shelves and industry connection hubs for pet insurance. The differentiated routes of various players are already very clear: ZhongAn focuses on product breadth, covering multiple categories from zero-deductible unlimited claims, direct anti-cancer payouts, to exotic pet-specific protection, with a complete product system. Ping An focuses on service breadth, leading the industry with coverage density of more than 9,000 designated hospitals. China Continent Insurance competes on enrollment thresholds, following an accessible route of low threshold plus claims upgrades; China United Property Insurance's Mengchongbao directly packages daily pet care services such as vaccines, deworming, and bathing into the policy.

Market Reality: Behind the 60-Fold Surge in Premiums

The supply side has diverse product forms, but the fundamental driving force is rapid demand-side growth. According to the "2026 China Pet Industry White Paper (Consumption Report)" released by the Paiduo Pet Industry Big Data Platform, total pet insurance premiums in the mainland were about 50 million yuan in 2020, and directly rose to 3 billion to 3.5 billion yuan in 2025, increasing about 60-fold in just five years. During the same period, the total number of urban dogs and cats exceeded 126 million. However, behind the substantial growth in industry scale, there are also some problems.

The larger the scale, the larger the losses. Jimu News once reported that pet insurance is one of the property insurance lines with the highest loss ratios, with loss ratios in some channels even exceeding 100%, and many insurers having comprehensive cost ratios above 100%, with most insurers suffering underwriting losses. Taking ZhongAn Online as an example, its digital life ecosystem business, which includes pet insurance, had a comprehensive cost ratio of 99.9% in 2025 and 99.2% in the first half of 2026, almost touching the underwriting break-even line, leaving extremely limited room for underwriting profit. Considering that pet insurance loss ratios are relatively high in property insurance, its single-line comprehensive cost ratio is highly likely to exceed 100%. (Note: Other companies have not separately disclosed pet insurance loss ratio data.) The reason is that pet medical care lacks unified diagnosis and treatment standards, and the cost of the same condition can vary several times across different institutions. Hospitals are both service providers and fee collectors, so there is naturally an incentive for excessive diagnosis and treatment, and insurers' claim verification costs are continuously pushed higher.

Low-price involution under product homogenization. Mainstream products in the mainland are highly similar: one-year terms, monthly payments of a few dozen yuan, a waiting period of about 30 days, 70% reimbursement at designated hospitals, and 40% at non-designated hospitals. When all insurers are selling the same product, competition is reduced to price wars and traffic battles. In contrast, product innovation in the Hong Kong market is much richer. In July 2026, OneDegree launched Hong Kong's first renal failure cash additional benefit, with an annual premium of HK$630 after a 25% discount for adding the rider, and the sum insured can be stacked up to HK$120,000. It also specially launched Hong Kong's exclusive "pet non-discontinuation protection" insurance. Prudential's Chong Aibao exclusively provides emergency pet boarding and up to HK$3 million in third-party liability, while Mitsui Sumitomo's HappyTails covers specific hereditary and congenital diseases, with a no-claim discount of up to 15%.

Trust issues are overdrafting the industry. In the pet insurance market, claim rejection complaints and insurance fraud incidents are both frequent. Zhang Yiqi, head of pet insurance operations at Ant Insurance, once told the media that on one side, the boundary for explaining pre-existing conditions is being infinitely expanded, while on the other side, fraudulent methods such as buying insurance while already sick and inflating drug costs remain hard to eradicate. Product claims costs crowded out by irregular diagnosis and treatment and fraud exceed 20%. The problem lies in insufficient infrastructure. National pet microchip registration coverage is seriously inadequate, and diagnosis and treatment information across hospitals and cities is fragmented. Insurers find it difficult both to verify past medical history and to identify falsification. In June 2025, Ant Insurance, together with institutions such as Nanjing Agricultural University, New Ruipeng, and Ruipai, released pet diagnosis and treatment standards, providing a reference sample for the market. After partner hospitals applied unified diagnosis and treatment standards, the average single-visit diagnosis and treatment amount for users fell from 1,830 yuan to 1,448 yuan, a decrease of 21%. If this model of medical-insurance linkage can be promoted on a large scale, its effect in driving penetration may be more effective than a hit new product.

Beyond Penetration: What Exactly Is Being Competed On?

First, looking at penetration, the UK and Sweden have pet insurance penetration rates of 30% to 40%, Hong Kong is about 8% to 10%, Japan is about 14%, Singapore is between 5% and 10%, South Korea is 2.1%, and the mainland is only 1% to 3%. Penetration is only a surface number. What is more worth asking is: what do high-penetration markets rely on to build core competitiveness? Hong Kong's pet insurance market has already formed a relatively clear product tiering system, covering not only inclusive medical protection plans, but also additional benefits for high-incidence severe diseases such as kidney disease and tumors, while also including hereditary disease protection and high liability limits. The high penetration of pet insurance in the UK and Sweden is built on the form of lifetime insurance, where the sum insured does not shrink because the pet gets older or has already suffered from a disease. For example, Sweden's Agria provides insurance for all dogs and sets no maximum enrollment age. In contrast, most pet insurance products in the mainland are concentrated in inclusive low-price tiers, lacking coverage for critical illness, chronic disease, and hereditary disease, mismatched with pet owners' needs regarding expensive medical care and concerns about major illness. South Korea's pet insurance penetration is also only about 2.1%, not far from the mainland level, but its development path is worth referencing. South Korea's first pet-specific insurance company, MyBrown, built a full-chain service system from product development to customer support around pet needs. KakaoPay's pet insurance product offers a maximum annual payout of 40 million won, a maximum protection period of 20 years, and also cooperates with animal rescue organizations to launch lost pet search services. The common point of these insurers is that they no longer sell only a single insurance product, but build a one-stop pet care service system. In contrast, most insurers in the mainland remain at the stage of single policy sales and claims, with low service value-added.

In the domestic market, some insurers have begun similar layouts. For example, Ping An launched a comprehensive pet ecosystem financial solution, and ZhongAn's Zhongchongbao directly incorporates pet protection into the corporate benefits system. But the real focus of industry competition still needs further questioning: can pet identity be uniquely confirmed? Can diagnosis and treatment behavior be standardized? Can diagnosis and treatment records be mutually recognized across hospitals? Can claims data truly flow back to support product design? Without these underlying capabilities, no matter how many partner hospitals there are, how complete the additional services are, or how rich the corporate benefits entry points are, it will be difficult to change the industry situation of high payouts, high complaints, and low penetration in pet insurance. Therefore, the real value of the diagnosis and treatment standards established by Ant Insurance together with multiple institutions is not the 21% drop in single-visit costs, but that for the first time it makes it possible for verifiable diagnosis and treatment behavior to be transformed into a pricing basis. The role of platforms also needs to be re-examined. Ant Insurance, WeSure, and JD Finance hold traffic and data interfaces. If they can accumulate industry-wide shared pet identity authentication, cross-institution diagnosis and treatment sharing, and anti-fraud rules, the industry's trust costs will fall significantly.