Does selling pet insurance require special training, not just a license?

Pet insurance has grown fast enough, with policies complex enough, that regulators decided an ordinary property & casualty license alone wasn't teaching producers what they actually needed to know to sell it responsibly. Here's the real split: which license category it falls under, and the separate training requirement a 2022 NAIC model act now layers on top of it in a growing list of states.

Why pet insurance is a P&C product, not a health product

Under US law, a pet is legally personal property, not a person with rights of its own — so insurance reimbursing you for a pet's veterinary expenses is classified in virtually every state as property & casualty coverage (commonly filed as an inland marine or casualty line), not health insurance. That classification is why a pet insurance producer needs a P&C line of authority (see our explainer on lines of authority) rather than the accident & health line that covers human medical coverage.

Most states: an ordinary P&C license, not a separate limited line

In most states, selling pet insurance still just requires the same general property & casualty producer license used for auto or homeowners coverage — no separate, pet-specific license category exists. A small number of states, including Idaho, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia, instead permit a narrower limited-lines license to cover pet insurance specifically. Regulators have debated expanding that limited-lines approach nationally, with insurers on one side arguing pet policies are complex and pricey enough to warrant the fuller P&C standard, and consumer advocates on the other favoring a lower-friction limited-lines path to widen access — an unresolved debate, not a settled national direction, so check which model your own state actually uses rather than assuming either one.

The training requirement the license itself doesn't cover

The NAIC's Pet Insurance Model Act (Model #633), adopted by the NAIC's Executive Committee and Plenary at its Summer 2022 National Meeting on August 13, 2022, doesn't replace the underlying P&C license — it adds a specific training condition on top of it. Under the model, a producer may not sell, solicit, or negotiate a pet insurance product until they've completed required training covering how hereditary disorders, congenital anomalies, and chronic conditions interact with a pet policy's coverage and exclusions, plus the product's rating, underwriting, and renewal mechanics — training most closely comparable in structure to the line-specific continuing education already required for annuities or long-term care (see our companion pieces on annuity training and the LTC Partnership training requirement).

Real consumer protections built into the same model

Beyond the producer-training piece, Model #633 also sets substantive terms for the policy itself: it shifts the burden of proving a preexisting-condition exclusion applies onto the insurer rather than the policyholder, requires clear disclosure of any waiting period before coverage on a specific condition begins, and draws a clean line between an actual insurance policy and a non-insurance wellness or preventive-care plan a pet retailer might bundle alongside it — the same "is this really insurance" question our companion piece on GAP insurance walks through for a different product.

How many states have actually adopted it — and why the count you'll see varies

Adoption is moving quickly enough, through active legislative sessions, that different trackers publish genuinely different counts depending on the date and whether "adopted" means signed into law, in force, or merely introduced. States that had enacted their own version as of publicly reported 2025-2026 tallies include Maine, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Arkansas, North Carolina, Washington, Delaware, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, with Florida's version taking effect January 1, 2026. Several more states had legislation pending in the same window. Don't rely on a specific state-count figure repeated elsewhere, including this page, without checking your own state's current statute directly — a legislative session can move a state from "pending" to "adopted" well before a given tracker updates.

What to actually ask

If you're buying pet insurance, it's a fair, specific question to ask whether the person selling it holds an active P&C (or, in the handful of limited-lines states, pet-specific limited-lines) producer license — checkable the same way as any other agent's, per our licensing guide — and, if your state has adopted the NAIC model, whether they've completed the pet-insurance-specific training it requires. Neither question is answerable from a marketing page; both are answerable from the producer directly or your state's own Department of Insurance.