Chief Marketing Officer / Canada
Three choices that cost growth and kept trust
- Gross written premium
- C$96M
- Year ended December 2025
- Insured dogs and cats
- 118,000
- At December 2025; pets, not households
- Annual marketing budget
- C$11.4M
- 2025; excludes broker commission
Decisions & consequences
01Explaining a 17 per cent renewal increase without changing anyone's cover by default
Claims cost per insured pet rose 19 per cent during 2023, driven by higher veterinary fees, more specialist referrals and an ageing population of insured dogs. Our loss ratio moved from 64 to 77 per cent. The pricing team and appointed actuary recommended an average increase of 17 per cent from April 2024 renewals, 19 per cent for dogs and 12 per cent for cats, with larger rises for older animals. The board approved the rates in January. My responsibility was how customers, brokers and clinics would hear about them.
Our head of retention proposed moving every renewing customer to a C$500 deductible unless they asked to keep their existing level. The visible average increase would have fallen to about 9 per cent, and retention would probably have held. Our legal advisers considered it permissible with adequate notice. I opposed it because customers who did not read the notice would discover the change only when they claimed. The chief executive agreed, and we accepted a retention forecast of 85 per cent instead of the 87 per cent the default scenario assumed.
We sent renewal letters 60 days ahead rather than our usual 30. Each showed the pet's previous and new premium, the reasons in three sentences and three ways to lower the cost: a higher deductible, a lower annual limit or a lower reimbursement percentage, each with an example of what a typical claim would then pay. Brokers and clinic partners received the explanation two weeks earlier, and claims colleagues joined the service team for the first month.
Retention for 2024 was 82 per cent. Roughly 3,300 more pets left than planned, carrying about C$2.9 million of annual premium. Twenty-three per cent of renewing customers chose a different option knowingly. Complaints about the increase were 2.1 per thousand renewals, against 4.6 after a smaller, unexplained increase in 2022. Next time I would begin explaining veterinary cost trends a year before an increase, not only in the letter announcing it.
Reviewing veterinary records before the first claim instead of after it
In 2022, 15 per cent of first-year claim decisions at Tamberlow were declines for pre-existing conditions. Most involved customers who had answered our application honestly but had not regarded an old ear infection, limp or skin complaint as a condition. Underwriting checked records only when a claim arrived, so the first explanation many owners received was a decline letter. Complaints and broker escalations clustered around those letters, and clinic partners told us they were weary of explaining our decisions to distressed clients.
I proposed reviewing each new customer's veterinary history within 30 days of purchase and writing to them about any exclusion before they claimed. Annick Ferrandou, our chief claims officer, supported the idea. Our chief financial officer questioned the cost of about C$1.2 million a year for 14 additional reviewers and record requests. Our digital sales lead warned that owners who learnt of an exclusion early would cancel within our 30-day full-refund period, and that the growth plan shared with Sallowbrook depended on first-year volume. Both concerns were reasonable, and we gave up some of that growth knowingly.
We launched nationally in September 2023 after a three-month pilot in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Each letter named the excluded condition, the record entry behind it and whether our wording allowed a review after a symptom-free period. My team rewrote the sales pages so the review was described before purchase. Underwriting retained every coverage decision; marketing was accountable for the clarity of how those decisions were communicated.
By 2025, pre-existing-condition declines had fallen to 6 per cent of first-year claim decisions. Cancellations within 60 days rose from 6 to 9 per cent, so about 1,300 fewer new policies stayed on the books each year. Complaints about first-year claims roughly halved, and clinic referrals rose 18 per cent. I would now involve clinic managers in designing the records request, because the early months were slowed by forms their staff found confusing.
Ending an online-only discount that undercut our brokers
From 2021 Tamberlow offered a 10 per cent discount to customers who bought directly on our website. It helped online sales grow quickly, but by 2024 it was damaging the broker channel that Sallowbrook's network had opened for us. About 140 brokerages offered our pet cover beside home and auto policies. Their staff kept hearing that the same policy was cheaper online, and several principals had stopped mentioning pet insurance. Broker-written new policies had fallen to 6,100 in 2024 from 7,400 two years earlier.
I recommended removing the discount and pricing the same cover identically in every channel. Our head of digital sales disagreed strongly: online conversion would fall and her team's acquisition cost would rise. Finance noted that commission made a broker-sold policy dearer to acquire in its first year. My answer was that broker customers renewed at 91 per cent against 79 per cent online, and that no partner will recommend us while our own advertising tells its clients they are overpaying. The chief executive accepted the recommendation, with a review after twelve months.
We removed the discount for new customers from January 2025 and phased it out for existing online customers at their next renewal, with written notice. Brokerages received a quotation tool carrying their own branding, a quarterly report on their clients' claims experience and joint training on exclusions. Dorian Mackleworth, a broker principal in Regina, helped us test the tool with eight brokerages before launch.
In 2025, broker-written new policies rose to 8,000. Direct online sales fell from 21,500 to 19,800, and our direct cost per acquisition rose from C$148 to C$171. Total new business moved only from 42,600 to 43,300 policies, so the change improved the mix rather than the volume. About 2,400 existing online customers cancelled when their discount ended. I would give those customers a full year's notice rather than a single renewal cycle.