WAGMO

Christie Horvath co-founded Wagmo in New York in 2018 after getting frustrated with the state of pet insurance as a pet owner herself. The product felt designed for the insurance company's convenience, not the customer's.

You pay monthly. You pay the vet upfront when your dog needs something.

You submit a claim. You wait.

Sometimes you get reimbursed and sometimes you get a denial letter that requires a phone call to dispute. Horvath's idea: build pet insurance that leads with wellness coverage — preventive care, routine checkups, vaccines — and makes reimbursement fast and simple.

The catastrophic coverage is still there as an add-on, but the entry product is the one that actually touches pet owners' lives every year.

Wagmo sells pet wellness plans starting at around $20 per month that cover routine care: annual exams, vaccines, dental cleanings, and flea and tick prevention. Pet owners submit a photo of their vet receipt through the app and get reimbursed directly, typically within days.

An optional accident and illness insurance plan can be added on top for broader coverage. They also sell through employer benefits channels, where HR teams offer Wagmo as a voluntary benefit that employees can elect during open enrollment.

The employer channel reduces customer acquisition cost and adds distribution at scale.

Wagmo Wellness Plans — monthly plans that cover routine vet visits, vaccines, dental care, and preventive treatments. Fast reimbursement via the Wagmo app.

Wagmo Accident and Illness Insurance — add-on coverage for unexpected vet expenses beyond routine care, offered in partnership with licensed underwriters. Wagmo for Employers — the B2B product that lets companies offer Wagmo wellness and insurance plans as voluntary employee benefits during open enrollment periods.

The employer benefits channel was Wagmo's differentiating growth move. Consumer pet insurance is a crowded, expensive-to-acquire market dominated by established players like Nationwide and Trupanion.

Going direct-to-consumer required competing for attention against companies with massive marketing budgets. The employer channel sidesteps that problem: get listed as an employee benefit and reach employed pet owners through their HR portal at enrollment time.

Younger workers — who are more likely to have pets and less likely to have children — are increasingly asking employers for pet benefits, which created the opening. Wagmo positioned itself as the simple, modern option that looks good in a benefits package next to dental and vision.

Pet insurance has a fundamental adverse selection problem: people who expect their pet to need expensive care are more likely to buy coverage. This pushes premiums up and keeps healthy pet owners out of the pool, which pushes premiums up more.

Managing that cycle is the core actuarial challenge for any pet insurer. Wagmo's wellness-first approach somewhat reduces the problem — wellness plans don't involve the same high-dollar catastrophic claims — but as they grow into broader insurance coverage, managing risk selection becomes more complex.

Competing against Lemonade, Figo, Trupanion, and Nationwide without a massive marketing budget is the other ongoing challenge.

Wagmo raised a Series A round of approximately $12 million in 2021, with backing from investors including Continental Grain Company — a major food and agribusiness conglomerate with an appetite for animal health and food technology investments. Earlier seed funding supported the initial product development and go-to-market work.

The employer benefits distribution strategy was a key part of the pitch to investors, providing a lower-cost growth channel than direct-to-consumer pet insurance.