In last week’s Viewpoint, I reviewed the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reforms for the veterinary sector and ended with a comment about trust — it’s not a vague sentiment made on my part. The CMA found that fewer than 50% of clients at large veterinary groups (CVS, IVC, Linnaeus, Medivet, VetPartners) knew their practice was part of a chain, and those veterinary groups averaged prices 18.3% above independents while scoring worse on client satisfaction with cost. That looks like erosion of the very thing that used to substitute for regulation in professional-service markets: personal/localized reputation.
Historically, “trust the vet” worked as an informal market mechanism because the vet was a known individual in your town whose livelihood depended on local reputation over a career. Word travels fast in a small market, and the vet bore the reputational cost personally — a strong incentive against overcharging or overtreating. When ownership shifts to a private-equity-backed chain, that mechanism breaks down: prices aren’t always set locally, the trusted local clinic brand now sits inside a different ownership and incentive structure, and personal reputation is diffused across a corporation.
This isn’t “markets work-versus-markets fail”, and it isn’t that “corporate vets are untrustworthy” — trust in individual vet professionalism remains high across the board according to the report. It’s that the mechanism that made this market self-regulating for decades was itself a market feature- localized reputation. Consolidation dismantled it faster than any replacement emerged. The CMA is betting mandated disclosure can rebuild enough information for price competition to work again. Whether that bet pays off is an open question.
Bob Jones
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