Increasing your horse’s insurance value

[Caol Ila]

I can only assume this is a common problem because young horses usually increase in value as they become older and trained (except for maybe racehorses bought for millions at yearling sales and go onto mediocre racing careers).

Hermosa is insured for what I bought her for as an unhandled two year old (cheap!). She must be worth more now given she is now a sort of backed and pretty civilised four year old.

How do you increase their value with your insurance company? Do you just pull a number out of thin air and say “horse is now worth x because she’s backed?”

 

[ihatework]

Depends how much you are increasing it by.
In all honesty I don’t increase value because I want vet fee cover at best premium possible.
Plus if increasing value significantly you often need to provide an up to date vet cert which is generally a hole I don’t want to open up!

 

[Tiddlypom]

It's worth asking your ins co and saying just that. It's fair enough with a young horse. You might find that you have to get her re vetted to increase the sum insured, but you might be ok.

The premiums might go up a fair bit but the vet's fees cover might stick at same value.

 

[sassandbells]

I was with PetPlan and when my renewal came up I asked if I could increase my youngsters value, only by around £2000, and they just asked me to email justification. Said how she’d been backed and what she was doing and they approved it for me with no issues.

ETA: I did also look at the value of other similar horses and included that in the justification email as well.

 

[Birker2020]

Bailey was less than 5K back in 2004 as a 7yr old when I first bought her. So when she was 10 and had progressed from unaff prelim to elementary dressage and was getting fairly reguarly placed in 90cm SJ classes when there were 40s in the class I decided to up her insurance to £7.5k.

I'd been looking at other WB adverts and felt that was the price I'd have to pay if i had to 'replace' her should something happen. I use the word 'replace' in the loosest terms, of course you never can.

I think from memory I was with NFU. I had to pay an additional £75 premium and get another 5 stage revetting which she passed.

I think i was asked to supply a signed letter from my friend who gave me a couple of jumping lessons to say she was worth it.

 

[SBJT]

I had to do justification of value and get a trainer to sign. They just looked at value of other horses based on age and experience.

 

[EnduroRider]

I increased insured value after the horse obtained some significant competition results. The insurance company accepted copies of results and rankings from a database as sufficient evidence.

 

[maya2008]

Many times insurance value is never paid out - horse dies from pre-existing condition (including any condition that was diagnosed more than a year ago so lots of things like arthritis, recurrent laminitis, Cushings, previous ligament damage that is then damaged again, etc), horse needs putting down but doesn’t quite meet BEVA guidelines (both of mine last summer - declining fast, in pain, stressed but not yet meeting guidelines…). I am sure people on here can fill in with examples! I always kept the value low to keep the premiums low and figured I would need to fund a replacement myself.