Agent Smyth Co-Founder talks impact of Nationwide dropping 100,000 pet policies

Back apparently Nationwide is not on your pet side. Nationwide Insurance not renewing 100,000 pet insurance policies due to the rising cost of veterinary care company says it is taking action to quote maintain long term viability and profitability. Impacted policyholders will be notified ahead of time they were going to keep their protections through the current terms. If you got it, you keep it. The news helping to give other pet insurance competitors they'll boost like lemonade, Chewy Petco and fresh pet all up. For context, 24% of Americans who own a dog or a cat have pet insurance according to Nerd Wallet. So basically like one in four. So why is this happening now and what are pet owners going to do about it? Is there bark just going to be worse than their bite? Let's talk about Michael Block. He's trying not to laugh. He is the Co founder and chief strategy officer at the data firm Agent Smith. He also wrote a note about this very topic. I have two dogs, Michael and I go to the vet. I even know there was insurance. Sometimes I wish I had it because the sticker shock can be stunning. But like what? What are we doing to the pets that are requiring these giant veterinary bills? Do we know that's the challenge, right? We need to figure that out as pet owners and as you just showed that way these stocks are acting. We need to figure that out as investors. You know what Agent Smith does is we were able to identify that story yesterday. It appeared on the news feed on our homepage. Now what our platform does, Brian, is it it uses autonomous AI agents which are able not just to ask a question about a piece of data and news, but then ask the follow up questions to follow up questions and generate ideas here. Obviously, you know, the 1st order effect was that some of these other insurers might benefit from Nationwide dropping out of the market. One name that you didn't mention that we mentioned, cited in our platform mentioned was Trepanion, which also had an impressive performance today. And our agents were able to not only pick up on that, they also picked up on some 2nd order effects, which we thought was unique. Now think about it, if people are losing their pet insurance and cost of vets are rising and companies that service veterinarians might suffer too. And we identified companies like Idix Labs, which provides lab services for veterinarians or Zoetis, well known company that does animal medication as potential losers from this thing, from this trend happening as well. We picked up on the trend and you know, we thought it was exciting to see that that is interesting. The 2nd order effects because you, you get to a point where you say I can't, I love my pet, I love my dog, but I simply can't afford that procedure and, you know, get to listen, here's the reality of being a pet owner. You make a decision. Our last dog lived to be 18 years old and he had a stroke. My dog growing up lived to be 21. But I hear you. Yeah, it's and you get, you get to a tough point where you have to make a hard decision. Or you say, I'm going to spend 1000 or 2000 bucks and the dog's 18 or whatever it might be. I wonder if that's part of what's going on here is that people just want to stay with their beloved pets longer. Of course, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, remember people, pet ownership came into vogue during COVID. People couldn't travel, they couldn't leave the house. So you get a pet. So with that, you know, I think companies like Nationwide ramped up, companies that served pet owners ramped up. And maybe they're a little bit over their skis now. Look, it's rough being a dog. And, you know, our job at Agent Smith is to make sure it's not so rough to be an investor. And we try to generate these ideas using our agents, and hopefully that helps everyone put a little more change in their pockets and take care of their beloved pets. I know my dog Dolly is we, we love her and we want to make sure that she does well. I told her she had to get a job this morning, so we're putting together a resume for her. No, I'm kidding.