horse insurance

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Aniseed

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I'm shopping around for a quote as thinking of adding vets cover to my insurance now my horse is getting a bit older (12). I can't understand why it is so expensive though. Petplan who I am with at the moment have quoted me £748 for a year, thats more than I pay for my car! I have had her for 8 years without needing the vet for anything other than routine vaccs etc so not sure if it is worth it.

Amtrust seem to be the most competitive quote at the moment. It is £358 including their bronze vet cover which is up to £5000 per incident and public liability. Only trouble is when I add hunting to my list of activities it brings the cos up to £435. I only hunt about 6 times a season so is it really worth having it on the policy? If say she did damage a tendon out hunting how would they know I wasn't just out hacking when it happened?

Need to sort it today really as my other policy is up for renewal tomorrow and I can't decide what to do.
 
The problem with trying to cover up what you were doing is say the horse injured itself and had to be (god formid) pts on site, there is no way to argue that you were doing anything else, it is at the end of the day fraud, a horse is more likely to injure itself on the hunting field than say at a local sj competition hence the premium is more.

With regard to quotes, try Equestrian world insurance services, they are very competitive and you can have an excess of £250 if you like to keep the annual costs down, or you can stick to a lower excess. Here's their website, and I can vouch that they are currently paying out vets fees for my horse, no problem!!!

http://www.horseponyinsurance.co.uk/
 
Another thing you could look at is all the other little bits and pieces to see what you can shave off because either you don't need/want it or because it's covered elsewhere. For example, loss of use - if you're not using your horse to earn a living, you may not need this. Your tack might be covered under your household policy, or even that of the yard where you're stabled. Public liability might be covered elsewhere too.

It does add up, I know, as I've just reinsured my boy and every year, I can't believe how much they are charging!!

Have you got him insured for his actual value? If you cut that down a bit then that can save you some premium as well.

(sorry if some of these points aren't relevant to you - I haven't been on the forum that long or read many of your posts so not sure of your situation)
 
Some good advice so far...nothing constructive to add, but just to say that I've been looking at different quotes and just had one from PetPlan for hacking/3rd party/vet cover and this was a little over 500 per year. I'm currently with NFU and paying a little under the PetPlan quote.

I sometimes wonder where insurance companies pluck their figures from. I tend to change car insurers quite often because you tend to get a very reasonable quote as a first time customer and then when it comes to renewal the premium is massively inflated even though you haven't made a claim.
 
NFU quoted more than Petplan. I only have the bare minimum, death, theft and straying, public liability and vets fees.

Really annoyed because I just got a quote from KBIS and they were offering 15% off on all online prices in August!

I've put the value of my horse as £3000 but I'm not sure if that is correct. Bought her for £500 8 years ago, she is a 15hh 12 year old Welsh cob. Not a world beater but very easy to do, happily competes at riding club level and is a fantastic hunter.
 
Horse insurance is a minefield, when I bought my horse 7 years ago I planned to take on the policy from the previous owners but it was over £500 even back then. He was a naughty unschooled 5 year old overheight connemara and they had him covered for loss of use and everything to the value of £5k. I adore him but there is no way even now that he's worth that. Insurance companies do rely on people not reading the info properly and just purchasing 'off the shelf'. I now insure him for vets fees only with E&L which is about £200 per year, you do hear some bad reports about them not paying out but my Mums horse is insured with them and they paid out last year without any fuss for some lengthly lameness investigations. I have third party insurance through the BHS and I've left it at that. There are so many optional extras like loss of use and tack etc that do bump the cost up. If I could afford it I'd have more comprehensive cover but vets fees are the main thing that I wouldn't go without cover for. I don't hunt but do plan to do some hunter trials which I am currently not insured for, I will probably add this on when it comes to it even though it will put the cost up I'd hate something to happen and find I wasn't covered and I'd paid all that money into a policy for nothing.
 
I've put the value of my horse as £3000 but I'm not sure if that is correct. Bought her for £500 8 years ago, she is a 15hh 12 year old Welsh cob
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Have you tried putting her value at a minimum - it may reduce the premiums significantly.
 
Well, I've just done a quote via Petplan for my horse. Death, Theft & Straying and Vet Fees up to £5k and a value on the horse of £1,000 - and the price was £295.00

So it's the extra's and value you've put on your horse that's resulting in such high quotes.
 
But surely I should insure her for her market value, otherwise god forbid I have to claim for death, theft etc then I will be at a loss.

Is it worth having public liability, it only adds about £10 to the policy and I'm not a member of any organisations that provide it.
 
Aniseed said:
But surely I should insure her for her market value, otherwise god forbid I have to claim for death, theft etc then I will be at a loss.

Is it worth having public liability, it only adds about £10 to the policy and I'm not a member of any organisations that provide it.
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Well - that's a decision only you can make. Can you afford to put your hand in your pocket and pay out £3k if you loose your horse, or do you pay the higher premiums to insure against the loss??

Everyone should have public liability insurance.
 
Ok, KBIS seem to be offering the best price by far but I can't decide which option to go for. I can have their leisure cover with Aniseed insured for £3000which gives £3000 for each vet claim, unlimited claims in a year, £275 excess for £285. Or I can go for their riding horse cover, insure her for less than her market value at £1500 and get up to £5000 per claim with up to £7500 for colic surgery, including money towards hospitalisation and alternative therapy with £350 excess for £339. Both have public liability.

There are too many options now!
 
Hmm, the reason that horse insurance is expensive is simply because of the amount of claims that occur under these policies (mainly vets fees and death), so you may well be looking at high premiums but say (god forbid) you have two £5000 vets claims in one year then that's well and truly wiped your premium and your policy is then running at a huge loss to the insurer. Horse insurance is not actually very profitable business unfortunately when you weigh up the potential claims costs against the actual premiums paid. An average policy premium is generally between £250 to £350 but average claims are approx £1500 so you can see who's out of pocket!!!

I would advise always to take out liability insurance, whether you insure the horse itself is entirely up to you but, in today's litigious society you need to be covered for 3rd party liability as potentially claims can run into hundreds of thousands if not millions if your horse say escaped from the field or threw you when out on a hack and caused an accident.

As for the sum insured, SOME companies will insist you insure for the market value and, if you don't then this can cause problems if you come to make a claim - they may well apply average so, for example if you only insured for half the horse value, if they insurer discovered this say when you made a claim for vets fees/death etc then they could decide only to pay you half the worth of the claim so my advice is to be careful with this! Personally I do not agree that insurers can tell you what your horse is worth as they are not valuers but they may well try and tell you what it's worth. I would always insure for minimum the purchase price of the horse.

I would also always insure for the highest level of use that you may compete at even if it's only once or twice a year - i can see your point re hunting but, as someone mentioned, if your horse did have to be euthanased immediately when out hunting and you weren't insured for that activity you would not be able to claim.
 
Aniseed said:
Ok, KBIS seem to be offering the best price by far but I can't decide which option to go for. I can have their leisure cover with Aniseed insured for £3000which gives £3000 for each vet claim, unlimited claims in a year, £275 excess for £285. Or I can go for their riding horse cover, insure her for less than her market value at £1500 and get up to £5000 per claim with up to £7500 for colic surgery, including money towards hospitalisation and alternative therapy with £350 excess for £339. Both have public liability.

There are too many options now!
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I have just taken out insurance from KBIS, I took it out an hour ago actully.
They gave me a quote for £334 when I looked online, then I rung them and the lady got the details up etc and then gave me a discount so in total it was £283. This includes the silver package for Vetinary Fee's, Personal Accident is scale 2, Public Liability scale 1.
But then my horse is only worth about £1200 what I paid for her as she is a very green tb mare 5year old and this was only for schooling/Riding club activies and Hacking as thats all ill be doing with her but at the moment all im doing is hacking and schooling (I havnt even done them yet, first day out hacking tomorrow).

Petplan gave me a quote for £500 .. So I saved quite a lot with KBIS.

:)
 
I endede up going with KBIS. They gave me 15% discount so got quite a good deal. Everyone I spoke to seemed very helpful.

If anyone is looking for insurance at the mo send me a pm as KBIS gave me a code which gives the discount for October and I can let you have it.
 
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