insure v save ?

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Lill

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Just wondered what others do?

New quote for this yr has gone up to £467 which i am sure is at least £70 more than last yr and for why I do not know?!
 
I insure as from experience I've had bills well into 5 figures more than once (for different horses) and would never be able to save that sort of figure.
Have you shopped around with other companies for quotes?
 
I save - BHS gold member for 3rd party.

I had a horse who had cancer and he was insured but the payout didn't cover all treatment so I ended up paying half his care anyway. He was insured LOU but they excluded cancer from his insurance (what was he going to die of?) and upped his premiums to £70 a month (that was in 1994). He died just over two years later. I started saving then and now over the last 20 years have saved myself £15,000 + I have had one large vet bill for a eye which needed two operations but that was only £1000 ish.
 
I save (and put the money into Premium Bonds!!). But I wouldn't do this unless I knew I could get the money in an emergency anyway. Oh and of course BHS Insurance for 3rd party stuff.
 
My insurance claims for last month are going to be something north of £8k. That's more than I have paid in premiums for 2 horses + trailer in the last 10 years.
 
I Insure, it is expensive but I like to know that I am covered and that any treatment decisions I make are hopefully not influenced by money. I have 3 insured (was 4 until last year) and have only claimed for one of those but the amounts claimed have more than covered the premiums paid for all horses.
 
I save. Several reasons, mainly as if I'm paying I can choose exactly what to have done and where without having to get it agreed by the insurer.

Same with all the other animal we have, farm cats and working dogs etc.
 
I depends what sort of animals you own. I have the type that are just about indistrucable, in 25years the highest bill I have had for illness or injury is £250 for colic, that includes about 15 animals and an elderly TB. I have had bigger bills, less than £600 but these would not have been covered by insurance. I always call the vet relatively early if there is something I thinks is not right and I haven't got to worry if doing so that I would exclude that 'limb' from the insurance. Someone I know has just had a huge bill for a field injury, most of the claim is covered by her insurance but there is quite a bit that is not. The horse will never be able to do any serious work although it is rideable so its doubtful whether she will get LOU, but he is certainly worth very little now.
The last time I bought a horse I insured it for the first two years until I found out it if it was a money pit or not. I claimed for a hoof abscess, it cost the insurance company £90 and they excluded the whole leg.
 
I insure 3 out of 5 of mine. For my WB I claimed just short of £14k in under 18 months of insuring. I got LOU for him and he is now uninsured and touch wood has been injury free in the past 3 years.
My daughter's cob mare we have owned for 7 years - she is insured and had no claims until summer 2012 and she had £4.5k of veterinary treatment - an operation on her hind tendon. We probably were sensible to insure as had we saved our premiums for this mare we wouldn't have saved £4.5k in 7 years.

I lost a mare I had owned and insured for 5 years - she lacerated an eye in the first 3 months of owning her and that cost just short of £4k for 2 operations and a 3 week stay at Newmarket. 5 years later she got stress laminitis and the veterinary treatment came to £1.8k for that and she was sadly pts and I was paid out for her insured value. So over £8k of insurance claims for 5 years of insurance was in my favour to insure.

My falabella x is uninsured and it is negligible what he has cost in 21 years of ownership in vet bills. I also have a Dales youngster who will be 4 this summer and I have had no vet bills in 2 years of ownership - I probably would not have insured him but Petplan offer a good discount when you insure 3 horses so I thought it worthwhile. There was an interesting insurance article a while ago in Horse and Hound and it stated how hardy and injury free natives tend to be.

Prior to this herd I had in my youth 2 welsh sec Ds and they were uninsured and never sick or sorry in many years of ownership. My daughter had a TB and we wisely insured him and he sadly broke a leg just 8 months into ownership.
 
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honetpot said:
I depends what sort of animals you own. I have the type that are just about indistrucable, in 25years the highest bill I have had for illness or injury is £250 for colic, that includes about 15 animals and an elderly TB. I have had bigger bills, less than £600 but these would not have been covered by insurance. I always call the vet relatively early if there is something I thinks is not right and I haven't got to worry if doing so that I would exclude that 'limb' from the insurance. Someone I know has just had a huge bill for a field injury, most of the claim is covered by her insurance but there is quite a bit that is not. The horse will never be able to do any serious work although it is rideable so its doubtful whether she will get LOU, but he is certainly worth very little now.
The last time I bought a horse I insured it for the first two years until I found out it if it was a money pit or not. I claimed for a hoof abscess, it cost the insurance company £90 and they excluded the whole leg.
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I agree and the more horses you have the less sense it seems to be to insure them. As an example, 4 horses/ponies I have had for the last ten years have not had a claimable injury whose cost was above my acceptable excess so no claims, but had I insured them it would have cost at least £300 each on average so £1200 a year, so a total of £12,000 over ten years. I'm not in favour of extensive surgery or exploratory investigations so saving seem to win over insurance for me.


Then in the previous 25 years my family have owed many horses, only one of which needed hospitalisation which was affordable then, but insuring in excess of ten animals would have cost a fortune and in the end few were ever in need of the vet (a few mild colics, joint ill with a foal, and a nasty cut when a pony ran into a fence).
 
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This year I'm doing both as my premium was nearly £1400 for two of them so I've stopped insuring my old boy on the basis that his front legs aren't insured anyway as had previous claim plus I wouldn't put him through any surgery at his age so didn't seem worth it at that price. I kept my mare covered purely because she is away at the moment and didn't want to risk anything whilst she is not under my care. Next year I may well stop insuring her as well due to the cost of premiums.
 
Insure. At the cost of insurance (current policy is around £400 so using this figure, but I hope to get it down to around £250 at the renewal), it would take me 12.5 years to save up the £5k needed for colic surgery.

Not to mention included in that I also get rider insurance, 3rd party and tack cover.

Yes we could get the cash to pay for these things if she wasn’t insured but it seems very silly to have to do this rather than just spending up to £400 a year for insurance.
 
I save and also my vet allows payment terms if I can get a bill out of him that is! Since my poorly pony was pts I've had no sicknote bills except one visit for a uveitis flare up and one puncture wound in the last 6+ plus years. Any emergency surgery would require a long trailer journey, so prevention is my aim! Anything serious not preventable/prevented would have to be decided on a case by case basis but when you live in the sticks you're often on your own with just the vet!
 
I would always look if your tack is insured if your tack is insured on your house or car insurance, on horse insurance its often not insured unless its stored in a locked building. Third party you can get covered through BHS, NPS about £50-60, or if you have your own and small holding insurance. Try not to duplicate cover as only one will actually cover the claim.
 
I save.

I was quoted about £1500 to insure my horse (a polo pony) so figured it's just not worth it. So far we have been unlucky though and have had a few largeish vet bills, but it hasnt been more than the insurance premium yet.
 
As a rule of thumb, ask yourself the following questions:

Can/does my horse live on just grass or hay?
Do I regularly walk past the 'lotions and potions' in a tack shop without buying anything?
Can I afford the odd one-off bill if necessary?

If you can honestly answer yes to these 3, then don't insure, as you're just paying the vet bill for the jumpy TB with a precious owner down the road.

If you are the precious owner of a jumpy TB (nothing wrong with that), then you should insure... especially if you're permanently broke, which you probably will be because 5 feeds a day and hoof creams are expensive.
 
Dizzle said:
Insure. At the cost of insurance (current policy is around £400 so using this figure, but I hope to get it down to around £250 at the renewal), it would take me 12.5 years to save up the £5k needed for colic surgery.

Not to mention included in that I also get rider insurance, 3rd party and tack cover.

Yes we could get the cash to pay for these things if she wasn’t insured but it seems very silly to have to do this rather than just spending up to £400 a year for insurance.
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£250 including rider, 3rd party and tack is a very good deal!
 
Thanks for the replies. 50:50 then really! Said horse is a welsh d so fairly hardy I suppose. May give them a call try find out why it has increased as he is hardly old at 7!
 
pennyturner said:
As a rule of thumb, ask yourself the following questions:

Can/does my horse live on just grass or hay?
Do I regularly walk past the 'lotions and potions' in a tack shop without buying anything?
Can I afford the odd one-off bill if necessary?

If you can honestly answer yes to these 3, then don't insure, as you're just paying the vet bill for the jumpy TB with a precious owner down the road.

If you are the precious owner of a jumpy TB (nothing wrong with that), then you should insure... especially if you're permanently broke, which you probably will be because 5 feeds a day and hoof creams are expensive.
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This really made me laugh!Yes my horse can live on grass and hayand yes I can walk past the lotion and potions. Since my horse was lame a few years ago , and 3000 pounds of the insurance companies money was spent investigating it coming to no conclusion, I did not renew my insurance for a horse that had no real monetary value, but have saved 10 pounds a week which has added up to a useful amount .
 
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I guess it's as broad as it is long but in my case I never claimed once for my mare, so I guess you could say that was 'lost' money.

The boy, on the other hand, had a 4k claim paid out in full within 12 months of owning him (persistent abscesses and eventual keratoma surgery).

There's no way on earth I could have saved 4k by putting the cost of his monthly premiums aside.

Like I say, six of one and half a dozen of the other.........
 
The other plus in my eyes (as SuperH has said) is that IF i had any emergency to deal with,..i myself can deal with it pronto, without having to phone the insurers to get permission/see if i'm covered for whatever has arisen.

I like to be in control..and if my boy needs surgery or has to get somewhere fast i can go without any delay or worry i have to make phone calls to go!

Each to their own i guess as we all have our experiences/reasons for insuring or not.

Just to add that i used to insure my previous horse, but never ever once in 10 years made a claim.
 
We pay just shy of £100 a month for both of our TB's. We did used to pay less with another company but were screwed over by not reading the exclusions (no sheep fencing in paddocks). One got a 4 inch cut through its coronet band and 4 weeks treatment cost us over £700 within 1 month of owning him. They didn't pay out (obviously) and then said his entire back leg was un-insurable despite making a full recovery with no other problems. Dropped that company like a hot potato and are now with NFU Mutual.

Like others, insurance even if it isn't used, gives you a massive safety blanket. NFU did a great job in taking all previous injuries into account and didn't just throw in exclusions because an area of our horse had an injury once. Unlike KBIS and Petplan.

So in short, Insure.
 
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