does anyone keep their horses UNinsured?

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eva

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helloooo wonderful HHOers.

recently a very experienced lady at our yard has told me she never insures her horse because you're not likely to pay vets more than insurance premiums!
also - my vet told me that if you claim for, say, right fore lameness, you can't ever claim for it again? if that's true, I'd say insurance sucks :(

do you have no insurance for your neddy and if so, why? have you ever insured him/her?
thankies!
 
I insured my chap for 10 years with NFU and then realised since I have a phobia about officialdom and hadnt claimed for any of the things that went wrong with him, they would prob all be excluded, so cancelled it last renewal!

It is a risk but if I wasnt going to claim anyway, and then they would exclude stuff, there was no point for me, also didnt want to have to get caught out if vet came out for something minor and forgot to ring them. Also big chap is semi retired.

Still have BHS gold for the liability side tho.

Edited to add that my doberman has a petplan whole liife gold policy and that will carry on paying but lots of other policys either exclude the area once theres been a prob, or have a 12 month limit on paying out, or both! Dobie gets special treatment as they are prone to medical stuff as big dogs and also wanted it for the liability insurance !!
 
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I have rider insurance for lifes unexpected accidents third party and all that but no, £900 each a year vet bill insurance is a bit much for x2 horses. I would rather pay the bills as and when, however if your horse is in competition etc it may be worth it for the increased likelyhood of injuries. If they were to need life saving invasive surgery I may opt PTS rather than thousands of pounds of investigative work and operations etc with no clear end to it and pain for the horse. Personal choices but whichever way you look at it horses or should I say vets are expensive.
 
I'm a gold member for 3rd party cover and that's it.
Iv seen to many people conned by insurance companies and Iv had horses uninsured for over 30 yrs with no problems. Biggest bill being £800 and vets let me pay 100 a month so I perfer to do that than chuck money at insurance companies for them not to pay out
 
Our vets run a credit union which we pay the equivalent of insurance premiums into and as a result everything is budgetted for, even the routine stuff, with no excess, and no exclusions.

Most of ours are too old to be insurable anyway.

I do have 3rd party though, through the BHS and EGB.
 
Yes it is true thats any injury/illness claimed for is excluded. Usually you can make multiple claims for the same thing in 1 year and then after that, its excluded. And you have to declare it has been excluded if you change insurance companies.

The thing is, I would say only don't insure your horse if you know for an absolute certainty that you could afford to pay in full for any vet bills that may come up.

For instance my mare ties up, when she first did it, we had 3 claims in the first year and the bills were nearly £2000....no way I could have afforded to pay for that myself. So the vet bills insurance was a god send. Unfortunately, she is now excluded on any insurance for azortoria/tying up.

Another person I know has used her full £5000 vets bills insurance for an illness that came up unexpectedly and required scans and all sorts.

The other thing to remember, is that insurance covers you for more than just vets bills...things like tack and public liability...

I wouldn't be without it tbh...
 
I have 3rd party and public liability for all my horses, but nothing else. I have 9 horses and over the years it has saved me a fortune. I have been lucky the horses have not had any major illnesses or injuries, so I have amassed a large sum which would have been spent on insurance, is now in a bank account, which is there if I need it.
 
No, Red isn't insured and neither are any of our other animals, it's too expensive eand how often are you going to claim? If we get a vet bill we just pay it, simple :) But I am a BHS Gold member for liability ;)
 
I have kept two horses (not the same two) for the last 10 years uninsured. I started by putting the insurance money in a savings account each month , now i dont have to. When one of my ponies had an accident (quite bad 2 weeks in horsepital) I paid it from my savings but the vets enquired as to whether he was insured and when I said no there was a different cheaper pricing structure and they seemed much more willing to work with me .Obviously depends on the type of horses you have ,my most expensive was £2000 and I usually pay under £500 and I dont compete but i find that insurance companies try and wriggle out of most things and cause loads of stress when you need it least . Totally agree about the third party stuff tho.
 
I dont insure mine, until yesterday I had 4 and if I had them all insured, I'd be thousands out of pocket. I am way better off not insuring as everytime I've had vet, I've never had to go over excess so all these years later they'd never have paid a penny out anyway.

Also, if one of mine suddenly got ill or insured and I had to come up with 2-3k for treatment, I have the money, so I can take that gamble.
I think for those who dont have savings, insurance is a good idea x
 
I always insured my big mare, and to be fair I didn't have any problems, they paid up on the claim I did make. But it wasn't a fortune and if I'd put the money in a bank account I'd probably have been better off. They do exclude parts once you make a claim. It's just gambling really, as with all insurance. But liability is a must for any riding horses.

My little old pony isn't insured as a) she's too old and nobody will touch her and b) she's retired and never leaves the yard. I guess there's always the chance she could break out one day and cause a road accident, but where do you draw the line?!

*Goes to find some wood to touch now*
 
We have public liability cover for what the horse might do on our household insurance. When I claimed on the pony club insurance for the ex racer sitting on someone's car the insurance company wanted to know what other insurance we had and they shared the payout. As daughter had only joined for the insurance we felt mightily aggrieved that we had wasted the money.:( I'm just about to cancel the insurance except for the trailer and start our own saving plan.

Does the BHS insurance include loss of earnings if you have an accident?
 
I find most insurance companies try to wiggle out off claims or have done to all my friends who now only do bhs 3rd party the same as me.
The Final vet bill will depend on weather your insured or not I'm afraid. It shouldn't but it does.
My friend owned a horse which she paid £18.000 for and her insurance was stupid money, after 4 yrs he went on loan to show jump and come back after 6 months as he was tripping a bit. Vets found him to have navicular and insurance would not pay out because his feet when he came back off loan weren't as good as when he left. That was a very very well known company starting with NF?
 
Always had mine insured, up until my last renewal anyway, so for about six years. Then I counted up how much I had spent *died inside abit* and realised it probably eclipsed the value of the horse tenfold! She has injured herself in the years i've owned her, but has never taken a lame step and i've never called the vet. So fingers crossed it will continue like this :)
 
Same as many of the above posters - My two are not insured. My lovely old mare was insured while I was at uni, because I had no savings, but now I put a little aside each month and would use that if I needed it. When she was insured, there were several things excluded (her eyes cos she once had an infection, her feet cos she is prone to thrush, and her near hind due to an old tendon injury) even though these (apart from the tendon, touch wood!) are one-off things that are unlikely to signify an underlying problem, and I didn't claim!
To be honest, if she needed surgery I would PTS, as she isn't the type to cope with a long rehabilitation. The money I have saved would cover a few scans, X rays or overnight hospitalisations, and I wouldn't go further than that.
I agonised recently over whether to insure my new yearling filly, as she was reasonably expensive, but I find that when I tell the vet they aren't insured, the treatment plan and prices are more realistic. I have found vets can be a little irresponsible in their recommendations if the horse is insured, and it's harder to know when to stop.
(As an example, my previous 4 year old was kicked in the field and had a compound fracture of her cannon bone. Until the vet understood I wasn't insured, she was suggesting referrals to all kinds of veterinary orthopaedic hospitals. And this was a very ordinary Sec D 4 year old, who although I loved dearly and didn't want to lose, I would never put through that! I can only imagine how tempting that would be if I had been insured, but I really don't think it would have been worth putting her through that with such a poor prognosis!)
 
I have in the past considered not insuring.... But in the last 18 months ended up claiming nearly £12,000!!!! (serious run of horrific luck!) So yes, I am definitly glad I'm insured!

I'm with NFU. they don't do blanket exclusions like entire limbs. If your horse is lame because aan abcess in that foot they will only exclude for that exact problem in the future. If it's just a superficial cut and your vet says and subsequent lameness is unrelated, again they would pay out.
 
I used to cause no one would insure him cause of his intermittent lameness!!

But he was PTS at the end of september cause he fractured his shoulder :0(

So yes but its a risk anyone takes!!
 
I took the decision not to insure mine, but 6 weeks after I bought him he was kicked and the ongoing vets bills have exceeded the price I paid to buy him

I can't get a quote for him until he's back in work now, but as soon as that happens, he'll be insured! Yes it may be a waste, but I'd rather waste £25 a month than have to fork out the thousands I have done do far.
 
I have had mine insured up til now, but having found out his true age and needing to go onto a veteran plan, I won't bother insuring. For all they will pay out, I am as well paying the bill myself if needed (hope not!). I have 3rd party with BHS Gold.
 
I have owned horses for 34 years and insured a colt once in case anything went wrong with the castration. That was 25 years ago.

I have just forked out £1000 purely for the diagnosis of my mare's damage to her superior check ligament, and in 2005 she cost me around about the same amount with vists/diagnosis for laminitis, sidebone and a very nasty abcess in the sole of her foot.

This is the only horse I've ever had that's cost me any money at all in vets bills, but it still isn't nearly as much as I would have paid out in premiums over 34 years, especially as I had 2 horses for 8 years as well.

The only thing is of course, that you have to be able to find the money if the bill does come in. I'm lucky in that I've been okay so far, but tbh, not sure what I'd do if it was a 5k bill!
 
Well, I DO insure mine and I'm so glad I do, as in just under a year, (and first eighteen months of owning her, so only paid about £500 in premiums (for two years)) we had

£5000 for a bad wound down to the bone. stitched up under GA, week in horspital and then twice weekly dressing changes where mare had to be sedated.

£2000 for pastern dermatitis

£1200 for sarcoids

£5000 for colic surgery

yes, we had a lot of bad luck, but after that, I will not keep a horse un-insured.
 
I know someone who rode at Badminton last year that doesn't even insure the horse they went on!!

A friend of mine also recently pointed out that as you pay monthly etc payments for insurance it's not much different to getting a loan out to pay for a massive vet bill etc and paying monthly installments AFTER the event instead of before. I'm not much keen on taking out loans but it is one way of looking at things. When you look at how much haras has just outlined though that's a h*ll of a lot of loan to have round your neck!
 
We are members of BHS gold.

5 were insured up till last year when NFU put a massive loading on ALL of them after we had made minor claims on 2, one of which was sold before needing to re insure. I refused to pay the loading on 4 which had never been claimed on and started putting the monthly payments aside. Two will be classed as veterans next year, so definitely wont try to re insure those, but may look for something for the others.
 
Liability through farm insurance but nothing else, ours are all too old or have pre existing conditions, and I also think that when the vet asks 'is he insured' s/he is inclined then to pile it on if they are.
One of ours had colic, it didn't require surgery but a fair amount of medication, tubed twice, etc and it came to under £500 - I'm pretty sure if the answer to that question had been 'yes' it would have come out at twice that.
 
Chunkie said:
The only thing is of course, that you have to be able to find the money if the bill does come in. I'm lucky in that I've been okay so far, but tbh, not sure what I'd do if it was a 5k bill!
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Put it on your credit card and pay off as quick as poss? Still quids in over all those years!
 
I have 3 fully insured at £70 a month, comes to £840 a year however last year I claimed £4k in bills which I wouldnt have had access ro so currently I keep them insured because things seem to happen to us
 
No, I don't insure individually, public liability under the business insurance but that's it.

I have too many horses, if something needs the Vet it gets it...up to a limit.
Insurance here is generally for mortality only so not worth the premiums for a horse valued under $10,000 to be honest.
 
No way!

All mine have been insured, some years i havent claimed but some years i have claimed, bills for £5000, £2000 and £1600 in the last 5/6 years.
But it is not just vets bills, its also if god forbid they got out and caused damage or someone got hurt by the horse. Public liability etc.

I have heard of people who dont insure their horse and for me i could not do it - I like to have a safety net should anything go wrong!
 
mollylolly said:
No way!

All mine have been insured, some years i havent claimed but some years i have claimed, bills for £5000, £2000 and £1600 in the last 5/6 years.
But it is not just vets bills, its also if god forbid they got out and caused damage or someone got hurt by the horse. Public liability etc.

I have heard of people who dont insure their horse and for me i could not do it - I like to have a safety net should anything go wrong!
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Actually most people who don't insure for vets fees have said they do insure third party.
 
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