The Companion Health Account
Instead of paying premiums, pay yourself
The industry already calculates what your animal will cost, then uses it to set your premium. Here is the same calculation, run for you.
Veterinary prices vary about two-fold across states, so this is the input that changes your number most. We do not look it up from your connection — that would mean either sending your IP to a third party or guessing from it, and neither is worth doing silently on a page about being straight with you.
Large, 4 years · national
- Expected care, per year
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- Reserve for one major event
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Full preparedness target
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Working it out…
Move the slider to whatever you can manage.
There is no minimum and no wrong answer. Whatever is in the account is that much less to find on the day — if the bill is $100 and you have $40, you need to find $60, not $100.
An estimate, not a promise. Figures come from the same model the calculator uses and move with your breed, age and location.
Why a target beats a premium
Personalised
We calculate what your animal is most likely to cost — species, breed, age and where you live.
Affordable
A monthly amount that fits your life and your budget. Partial participation is a success, not a failure.
Gets better
What you still need to find falls as your balance grows, and whatever you have not spent stays yours. A premium rises every year your animal ages and credits nothing you have already paid.
We know your animal
Species, breed, age, location, medical history, care pattern.
We run the math
The same actuarial inputs insurance uses — the result is yours.
You choose what you can afford
Weekly, fortnightly or monthly, and you can change it.
You build balance and get ahead
The target drops as you progress.
You are ready for it
Use it for what matters, at any practice, with no claim to file.
The figures above are computed for the animal selected at the top of this page, from the same model the calculator uses. Insurance figures are the published market average for a dog at a $250 deductible and 80% reimbursement.
The longer we know them, the sharper this gets
An insurance premium prices your animal by its rate class — breed, age, postcode — and goes on doing that for life. Nothing you learn about your own dog moves the number towards your dog. This works the other way round: the estimate starts as a breed average and is replaced, piece by piece, by what actually happens to your animal.
Today — the breed averagewhere you are
Species, breed, age and where you live. It is what we expect before knowing anything about your animal in particular, and it is the same figure any well-informed stranger could reach.
As records arrive — their own history
Every visit, invoice and result that reaches the record shifts the estimate off the breed average and onto your animal. A dog that has never had a skin problem stops being priced like a breed that usually does.
Then — what is coming, not just what it costs
Care that is due rather than care that is average: the screening this breed needs at this age, the recheck a diagnosis implies, the dental that is overdue. A number becomes a schedule.
Companion Health Account (CHA)
Coming soonThe number above is yours today — open a savings account at your own bank and start on it this afternoon. The Companion Health Account, or CHA, is the account we are building so the balance is easy to hold and easy to spend when it matters, with a card to spend it from. It does not exist yet, and it is designed around a few commitments worth stating before it does.
Wherever Visa and Mastercard are accepted
Usable wherever Visa and Mastercard are accepted, or by ACH transfer for a practice that invoices instead. No network to check, nothing to pre-authorise, and no list of approved clinics — which matters most at an emergency hospital at two in the morning, exactly where a network would bite.
At participating practices
Some practices choose to offer a discount when the card is presented. Each decides for itself whether to take part and on what terms — we neither set nor coordinate them — so it varies, and many will not. Ask your vet whether they take part.
The price is between you and your vet
No claim to file, no reimbursement to wait for, and no policy terms deciding which parts of the bill count. With insurance you pay the invoice in full first and find out afterwards what comes back; money you have already set aside spends the day you need it, at whatever practice you choose.
Still your money
Refundable, with no expiry. We will not book revenue on unredeemed balances, and if you no longer need the account the balance returns to you in full.
Spent on the animal
Authorisation is restricted to veterinary services and prescriptions, so the money you set aside for care stays set aside for care.
Keeps the record whole
A charge at a practice not yet on the platform can trigger a records request automatically, so the chart stays complete even when care happens somewhere you did not plan.
It pays for care beyond your own animal
A defined share of what the programme earns — card interchange and our share of interest, never your balance — funds veterinary care for animals whose households cannot afford it. Your money is not the source and is never reduced by it, so this is not a donation you are making. We publish what was generated and what it paid for.
Through your employer, if they offer it
Post-tax payroll deduction, where an employer chooses to offer it. The account belongs to you, not to them — if you leave, the balance goes with you.
None of this exists yet. The CHA needs a banking partner we have not signed, and we will not describe terms, rates, fees or a launch date until it does — there is nothing here to sign up for. The calculator above works now, and your own bank will move the money for free in the meantime.
Why not just buy insurance?
We read the binding policy forms of — US carriers, clause by clause. Four things stood out.
The pattern is consistent: the more predictable a cost is, the less likely a policy covers it. Waiting periods, bilateral exclusions, curable-condition windows and pre-existing rules all carve out the same thing — foreseeable expense. Prediction and insurability move in opposite directions.
Insurance does one thing genuinely well and we do not pretend otherwise: a savings balance starts at zero and risk does not. Cheap accident-only cover exists precisely for the years before a balance can absorb a catastrophe.
— carriers, clause by clause, with the source and verification date on every cell — and the terms for your own state.