Do you insure for loss of use?

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Ilovefoals

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I have been doing with my gelding at a cost of £79 a month. My renewal has just come in and it's now been hiked up to £94. Is it worth it? I've had him for a year now and just wondering how easy it is to claim loss of use. Is it worth having?
 
It depends - if he is a high value horse that you bought for eventing, say, then it might be worth it. Loss of use won't pay out on a blemish on a showing horse, even if was bought for showing. What it will pay out on usually, is if a horse gets a career ending injury so it can no longer do what it was bought for. If you can still ride it as a hack then you will only get a proportion of its worth, not the whole amount. LOU insurance is expensive and it is hard to get a payout, as the insurance company will insist on a strict interpretation of the conditions.

Only you can decide whether it is worth it.
 
The thing is you are will be paying over a thousand pounds a year, if you saved the money instead would you be able to cover any emergencies that cropped up in the first year or so? In my mind its better off in a horse only savings account, if you can take the initial risk.
 
No I don't any more as it's so expensive so prefer to put the money aside and get interest on it rather than the insurance company getting the interest. That said, if I had a £20k horse than I probably would!
 
I don't insure .
But did get in involved in aLOU claim .i bought subject to vetting a fairly expensive hunter, he failed the vet with a heart problem which the vets rarely see as usually the horses either recover fairly quickly or drop dead.
It's a long story but he ended up staying with us while all this was going on after 3/4 months issue had improved but was still not right so the insurance company sent him to the nearest uni where two specialists looked at him and said while horses do recover from this after the time that had passed they thought it was highly unlikely he would recover but not impossible .
The insurance company paid 80% without a quibble however he had had passed a five stage vetting three months before the one he failed that vetting was done by a very well known equine vet and we could prove he was doing the job he was insured to do right up until the condition was discovered .and his value was easily proved as it was only three months since the market had set his value so that was easy.
There's no doult it worked out extremely well for his owner.
And happily for Fatty four years on he with us and well but that's a another story.
 
If you've had him a year and things are going well (and assuming you vetted him on purchase) then it unlikely he's got anything underlying that would suddenly appear now. So your cover is largely for injury - and this risk of that highly variable.

What is the small print in your policy? If they only pay out 60% of his value if he is field sound again it's different to if they will pay out 100% if he can be a light hack vs what you've insured him for

£94 a month is £1128 per year - how many years would you need to save to cover what the insuracne will pay - if he's a £20k horse it's a different decision to a £3k horse. If he's a £3k horse and they ony pay out 60% less excess you'd only be looking at a year or so to save the equivalent cash

I'd also agree with poster above who said LOU claims are notoriously difficult to get paid out on, often with insurers insisting on pointless surgery just in case and/or wiggling out in some other way.
 
Thanks guys. I have decided to cancel the lou as except for an issue with an abcess, he has had no lameness issues in the past year. He's still insured for vets fees tho. Appreciate the opinions.
 
All mine are LOU and will allways be im with pet plan they were excellent I got LOU on seventeen year old horse as he couldnt jump no more and the money i got of them went towards more treatment as vet bill was thirteen thousand and rising sure helped towards the cost now he happy hacker.
 
LOU is an expensive option. I had it on my WB and claimed within 18 months of having him. I got 80% of his insured value and all the vet fees for the investigation and treatment too; so it was a good decision to have it. He is the first horse I have taken LOU for; being a competition bred horse I figured he may be more fragile than my natives.
I have 2 others insured but no LOU and the WB is now uninsured altogether as his premium went through the roof following his LOU claim.

There was an nteresting article a few weeks ago in H&H and statistics showed that Natives are the least claimed for in veterinary fees. It also suggested that LOU was a good thing to take for the first year, just as you have done and then remove it.
 
I think it's very much a personal decision that needs to be based on individual situations. Without a doubt it's expensive to insure for LOU but the deciding factor for me was what would we do if the horse wasn't able to carry out the job they were currently doing?

In our case we don't insure for LOU and probably wouldn't replace a horse as we have youngsters coming on to take the place of the more established horses and if feasible would just do light work or retire the LOU horse. When we only had one or two we did insure for LOU but to save money didn't insure for the full market value as if anything had happened we would not have wanted to replace with an established horse but would have chosen to buy a youngster so made sure any LOU payout would have covered what we thought we would need to buy a suitable youngster.
 
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