Betz brings in Intermedica VP to strengthen hospitals and health insurance

After seven years at Intermedica, Masanori Shibata will now have to prove that he is “good for dogs”.

Petz has just hired the former pv of the health operator’s branches as its new vice president of services, a position the company has now created to take care of network hospitals and veterinary clinics, as well as a pet health plan that will still be launched this year.

The new site also includes services such as bathing, personal care and training, as well as the creation of new services such as dog walker And the Pet sitter.

At Intermedica, Massanori was responsible for consolidating the assets acquired by the healthcare operator. Before that, he spent another eight years in Santa Helena, which was bought by Amil in 2017.

At Betz, the CEO will face the challenge of giving traction to a column that is still young, but has significant growth potential. Masanori told Brazil Magazine who have chosen to get out of their “comfort zone” because the pet health market is “a blue ocean. It’s a rookie in Brazil, and there are still many opportunities.”

Petz owns 16 hospitals and about 150 veterinary clinics, which today represents less than 5% of the company’s revenue. Massanori’s mandate is to at least double that stake in the coming years.

“The service area is about 10%-15% of our stores,” said Chief Financial Officer Allen Pena. “Revenue has to at least reach that level, to justify the space.”

A relevant part of Massanori’s work will be setting up the Petz Health Plan – the first on the market that will operate in a vertical model.

Initially, the health plan should help increase occupancy of 16 hospitals in the network, reducing costs and increasing margins for these operations – which today are below the company average. But Betz also sees room to expand the network as demand for the health plan grows.

In Brazil, the penetration of pet health plans is still minimal – there are only 150,000 dogs and cats insured out of a total of more than 90 million pets.

In England, this penetration is 25%; in Sweden 40%; And in Norway 14%.

Allen said Betz looked at a lot of people players International Health Plans a pet And that there are two major margin violators: the so-called PAC (The cost of owning a pet) and the certified network, where operators do not control costs.

“We’re not going to have any of these perpetrators,” she said. “Customer acquisition will be done in our stores, with our more than 7,000 employees actively exposing customers, and we will have great control over costs as we go vertical.”

Petz has a base of more than 2.3 million active customers, of whom 350,000 are digital subscribers (and therefore more loyal to the brand).

According to Masanori, the market for pet health plans should go through a strong turmoil in the coming years, when the loss ratio will become stronger.

“All the plans that exist today are with approved networks, in a transfer and reimbursement model, where they don’t control anything. When costs begin to mount, as the population ages, these plans will have a serious problem.

In this context, he believes that the vertical Betz model will be a differentiating factor, “for both the information control and the integrated health model, which also functions in prevention.”

Pedro Arbex