Insurance - does anyone not bother?

M

MyBoyChe

Well-Known Member
Joined
17 April 2008
Messages
4,621
Location
N. Bucks
Visit site
I currently pay NFU £50pcm for insurance, minimal value but max vets fees, 3rd party liability. I have to say Im not overly happy with their service so far on a claim I am trying to make. I have just calculated that I have paid the best part of £2k over 4 years in premiums, so far had 1 claim for a sore ear (£300ish) and currently having lameness investigations done so who knows. I am collecting a new horse next week who will be my new happy hacker, little bit of schooling and we may even venture to local shows for in hand stuff. He is a native breed (current horse is TB). So, do I bother to insure him. I do have sufficient savings that should he need anything doing, I could, if I chose, pay for it. If I put the premium money to one side each month, that adds up to a sizeable chunk each year. Is it possible to get 3rd party cover only? Has anyone else stopped insuring due to high premiums and bad service. I thought the whole point of insurance was peace of mind but chasing them up all the time is causing me more stress than I need tbh!!
 
I never insure I have third party from my BHS gold membership and just pay the vet as stuff happens I have 5k in the building society and a credit card for total disasters.
 
I don't insure, I use British Driving Society or BHS [has legal advice line] for third party [may be covered in household ins]
I have a nice 15.00 pony who is not prone to injury or lameness, and am confident I will cover if there is a mega problem, or will have him put down [joking].
I am careful with his feed and his mangement.
 
Have total of 12 horses and foal and of these only 2 have insurance. Our stallion and my riding horse. The others have a pot in the building society for what ifs.
 
I stopped my NFU insurance once I had more than one horse - currently have four. I do have BHS Gold insurance for third party. If our horses need the vet, we'll pay, same with the dogs, but we'll also take a bit of a view on it - for instance, I wouldn't put my beloved 20 year old through a big op, but that's based more on his survival rate than the costs involved...
 
I stopped insuring my lot when I got sick and tired of being treated like a criminal by Pet Plan. I have been keeping a journal of my daily life for over 30 thirty years. It all started when I'd jot down which of my dogs was wormed when and with what. Over the years my journal has grown and has been added to every night before I go to sleep. On several occasions said journal has sorted out which foot was treated for lameness when Pet Plan wanted to refuse payment because of "a recurrence of lameness in the same foot." Wrong. When I wanted to insure a 6 months old foal, I had to jump through hoops to prove that my Shires were pure and not just some "old carthorses." I have my OH's complete support after he witnessed the 3 days I spent, 7 years ago, writing out a full six generations pedigree of said baby, with running commentary on each of his forebear's accomplishments. We both agreed that it wasn't worth the aggravation. I have money set aside for major events, so that while the procedure/illness/surgery is upsetting and frightening enough, I don't have to deal with some lackey who either doubts my word or doesn't know his/her own job.
 
As far as the individual horses are concerned, no, no insurance.

For my 10 years of horse ownership no one has gone without including the dogs and cats. They've incurred vet's fees of course. Some 4 figures. Have paid them off. Thing is I have limits and have a feel for the individual animal at hand. Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should be done.

Case in point if I had somehow insured the then 9 YO wreck of a gelding I bought because I felt sorry for him, he probably would have been put down ages ago. He hyper extended his hock in a race ending up with 10 chips and a real mess. He also had a wound on the back of the knee you could see into the joint capsule. Again, I bought the horse this way. Insurance would have paid for fancy this that and the other to be done. Vet advised me to put down as surgery was expensive blah blah blah. So I agonised on what to do with my new purchase that I bought because I was worried where he was going to end up. I let the decision be Frank's. I turned this horse out daily as I wanted him to have quality of life instead of quality. I gave up on the knee that kept re bcessing with the antibiotics and special creams. Two weeks outside and that whole closed over and the proud flesh gone. Sorry but mother nature did that job better.

End of story, this horse became not only sound but riding sound. He's still with me at 17 and still riding. If I'd had insurance we would have been from one clinic to the next for wound cleaning, surgery, box rest, ect. Even my vet at the time said we could have spent any amount getting stuff sorted but that doing what we did meant he healed with movement. Everything went where it needed to to heal and he could function.

I do what I have to. I'm always going to be quality over quantity. Unlimited funds does not guarantee that for any animal. I will pay my bills. Nope, I don't have personal accounts for all the animals in the bank. But they get what they need at all times.

Terri
 
Didn't bother to insure until a year ago, then had 2 incidents with my uninsured dog within 6 months of each other, cost me over £2500! Can't insure dog as she's too old, so have insured my horse so at least one of them is not going to cripple me financially!
 
I cut it down to third party for the ones not covered by pony club for a couple of years. I have to say I scared myself to death in the first month when all the tack and rugs for four horses got stolen and one horse came in with an awful cut! I think the vets were better with them when they weren't insured. We had a lot of money in the bank at that point. Now we don't so they are insured again, but only for £3k, which is probably less than half their value, but what I could spend on a youngster to bring on.

Over the years I have only spent a couple of hundred a year average on non-routine treatment and have never claimed (although should have as certain things got excluded anyway!) I have insured the dogs for the first time in my life last year - they are rescue labs and too many of my friends were having massive problems and operations on their labs so I got spooked!
 
I insured my cob when I first bought him and within a month of having him he fell while I was out riding and damaged his offside hind leg. He was lame and his hock joint was very swollen, I rung the insurance company to inform them that I was calling the vet out to check. I did this and was informed that it was not a major problem and thet he would be back to normal quickly but may always have one hock bigger than the other. He was fine after a few days rest and the swelling went away as well. Notified insurance company that I would not be making a claim as all was fine, they then informed me that that leg was now no longer covered by the insurance! Cancelled policy immediately and just put the £30 a month into a savings account to cover future vet bills.
 
Not any more and funnily enough, I have more peace of mind without insurance than with it.
I now make the decisions regarding their care without Big Brother watching over my shoulder, waiting to add another exclusion on the policy or telling me when its acceptable to euthanise my own horse.
Vets seem to take more trouble in examing rather than putting the horses through a routine set of diagnosic tests that are of little benefit to them.

Best of all, the insurance money is now making interest in my own bank rather than the insurers.
 
I took Associate Membership of British Dressage to get 3rd party the cheapest way (it's also on a lot of people's house insurance, so check if you have that).

I wouldn't say I "dont' bother" to insure. It's more that I worked out that with 3 horses it was almost certain to cost me a lot more money to insure than to pay vets bills myself.

And in spite of a tie back (£2,100) and a wobbler (£1,100) and a massive infection £1,900) in the last 4 years, I am still several thousand pounds better off than if I had insured.

I find "This horse is not insured" have a kind of magic effect on what Vets want to charge you for :D
 
Another uninsured here. Living where we do, it's quite difficult to run up a big bill - there are simply no facilities to do much investigative work or major surgery and if one of mine was in the position of needing an emergency operation that couldn't be done in the field or stable, it would be kinder to PTS than put them through the four hours (at horse transporting speed) of travelling to get to the nearest place that could do it.

I have a credit card with a £10k limit just in case.
 
Equilibrium Ireland said:
If I'd had insurance we would have been from one clinic to the next for wound cleaning, surgery, box rest, ect. Even my vet at the time said we could have spent any amount getting stuff sorted but that doing what we did meant he healed with movement. Everything went where it needed to to heal and he could function.
Click to expand...

I had this experience recently. My horse was in hospital for a huge infection around a hock. He had a kick on a front leg with a lump on the bone, a flesh lump and an open wound that had already taken several weeks and had not healed.

He had never been unsound on the leg for one moment. He had one lot of antibiotic cover when it was new and it was clearly not infected.

The vet treating the hind leg, which was severely infected, desperately tried to persuade me to pay to have the foreleg xrayed. Her argument was that there might be a bone chip in there, it was taking far too long to heal. My argument was that the horse was sound and that there was no way in the world that I was going to allow a general anaesthetic, which carries a 1% risk of death and an even greater risk of damage during the recovery, on a horse which was not unsound, even if there was a bone chip in it.

When the back leg infection was under control, the front leg took a further six weeks to completely close. I reckon that there probably was a bone chip in there, which was shedding through the hole and that's why it did not close.

When she saw the horse a couple of months later, she was shocked. The hole was closed, the hair had grown and both the flesh lump and the bone lump have gone. Nature often knows best!
 
Can anyone who has the BHS membership for 3rd Party cover give me a quick synopsis of how this works and idea of cost,(from the horses mouth so to speak).
 
You take a BHS membership (Has to be Gold, I think) and they automatically give you full 3rd Party insurance for anything to do with your horse(s) to millions of pounds. So do BD, BE and BS. BD have an associate, non-competing membership which when I took it was the cheapest way to get 3rd Party insurance. Check their websites for details of cost.
 
MyBoyChe said:
Can anyone who has the BHS membership for 3rd Party cover give me a quick synopsis of how this works and idea of cost,(from the horses mouth so to speak).
Click to expand...

I have BHS gold - it is £62 per year. It covers for £10 million public liability and some personal accident cover http://www.bhs.org.uk/Join_Or_Support_Us/Join_the_BHS/Membership_Gold.aspx

I don't insure after a bad experience with an insured horse who had cancer. I have saved the premiums now for 15 years and have had 1 big injury in that time - an eye ulcer that needed two ops. Cost £1000. I am well up in money terms and as my mare is now 21 the cover would be minimal.

If I got a new horse I would reconsider whether to insure again. A friend didn't and her 4 year old had to have a colic op 3 months after she bought her -£3900.

I wold choose the company very carefully though!
 
I did insure and it was worth it as I was paid out £3500 for a colic related hospital stay, but after that all colic/digestive system problems were excluded and the excess was around £200. Now in my experience most call outs for minor problems always come to £200! Also they wouldn't pay out when my £1250 saddle was stolen from my livery yard. So I cancelled and now just have BHS gold insurance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top