The news: ManyPets, a UK pet insurer that also operates in the US, has partnered with UK firm Vet-AI to embed Joii, Vet-AI’s digital pet care app, in its insurance app. 

How it works: Joii started as a telemedicine app connecting pet owners with vets over chat and video. It has since added a chatbot trained on Vet-AI’s consultation data, computer vision tools that assess pets’ gait and skin, and a product store keyed to symptoms. For a pet insurer, those features form a triage tool that minimizes losses by keeping pet owners out of the vet clinic when they don't need to be there.

Trendspotting: Pet insurance has grown mostly through affinity partnerships, as our report Insurance Trends to Watch in 2026 covers: Chewy with Trupanion and Lemonade, PetSmart with Banfield and MetLife, Walmart with Nationwide. Each pairs a retail or veterinary brand with a carrier to put coverage in front of pet owners at the point of purchase. The ManyPets and Vet-AI deal does something different. It's a clinical integration aimed at loss management on existing policies.

Zoom out: Pet insurance is growing quickly inside a much larger pet economy: US gross written premiums for pet insurance climbed from $1.99 billion in 2020 to $4.74 billion in 2024, per the North American Pet Health Insurance Association. That's still a sliver of the $158 billion US pet industry, per the American Pet Products Association. The trade body also reports that 95 million US households owned at least one pet in 2025.

And many major providers saw double-or-triple-digit jumps in premiums between 2024 and 2025 such as 11.7% for Trupanion Inc., 125.4% for JAB Holdings BV, and 56.7% for Lemonade.

Implications for insurers: ManyPets is using a health-insurance playbook to manage pet-insurance loss ratios. US health insurers routinely offer virtual care through telehealth providers at low or no cost to the insured. P&C apps have historically been downstream of the insurance event built for paying premiums, checking coverage, and filing claims. ManyPets is pushing the app upstream, where it can shape outcomes before a claim is filed.

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