Trupanion: Maine Regulation

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I see. How many official complaints to you get relative to policies?

To give you a sense of the numbers, in 2019 and 2020, about 50% of the complaints were about premium increases. Around 35% to 40% were related to claim denials, pre-existing conditions, waiting periods, and the like. The remaining 10% were various issues such as perceived miscalculations of deductibles or customer service-related issues.

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Are there any particular issues that the regulator frequently flags as below standard, warranting further investigation?

Most of our complaints, about 50%, come from California, which is our largest state, followed by New York and New Jersey. The majority of the complaints from California in the past have been about premium increases, which we can't control because the rates are approved by the state. If customers want to complain about the rates, they should direct their complaints to the California Department of Insurance, which approves the rates.

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I understand. We can discuss this later, but I wanted to quickly check the interesting areas in those documents, as they can be quite lengthy. For instance, what's the loss ratio they're running at? There's a lot of information in there, and it would be helpful if we could go through it together for about five minutes. We can do this later when we have around 20 minutes left.

The Maine regulations, including the removal of the waiting period and the impact of regulations on insurance, came into effect on January 1, 2023. This affected many people because waiting periods were no longer allowed. They were only removed for accidents that are considered acute. Previously, acute related accidents or illnesses were preexisting, but now they must be covered. For example, when you sign a contract, say on January 31, you couldn't submit a claim for 15 days, no matter what happened. Even if there was an accident, you couldn't submit a claim due to the waiting period. However, the new law states that there can't be a waiting period for any acute accident-related injuries or illnesses. If you buy the policy now, on July 31, and your dog gets hit by a car tomorrow, it must be covered.

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