COTH article on insurance and eventing horses

[vxf111]

The more often you call out the vet to look, the more often you’re going to catch something that does result in a claim. I think diligence probably always means more expensive for the insurance company regardless of discipline. Eventers might be the bad combo of not diligent when they get horses and diligent once they own them. Hence a lot of claims that the insurance company can’t exclude as preexisting. Hunter jumper owners who PPEs do find things, but the insurance can exclude them. Insurance companies benefit bigtime from PPEs in terms of pricing the risks but also have arguments for exclusions later.

It’s just a cost/benefit thing for the companies.

A robust PPE is good for them. Because any little ding on the PPE report is something the company can exclude from coverage.

You don’t want someone who calls the vet out often looking for things. The more you look, the more you find. Some of the most expensive stuff for the company are things only a really diligent person looking and doing a lot of diagnostics would find. And a diligent person has a diligent vet who is going to want to do more. You’d rather have the horse owner who never bothers with looking for problems and just regularly injects everything. No diagnostics means not finding much. And those injections are “maintenance” and are excluded from the insurance.

You don’t want someone who is going to try to keep the horse going for a long career. The age and wear and tear means more and more is going to need to be done over time. You want someone who rides for a couple years and then moves up. Because moving up means a new horse with a new PPE and new excluded conditions, and less likelihood of being the insurance company holding the bag on mortality when the horse dies. You want someone who regularly buys and sells and buys and sells and the cycle repeats.

The sweet spot is someone who vets the sh*t out of their horses and then “maintains” them constantly until they’re quasi broken before passing them on and buying a new one rather than trying to fix them. Who does that sound like? Not most eventers

[Libby2563]

@vxf111

A robust PPE is good for them. Because any little ding on the PPE report is something the company can exclude from coverage.

Everything you said makes sense to me! However, when insuring dressage horses and eventers, I’ve never had an insurance company ask for PPE results, a report, x-rays, or any further info. Not even when I insured a leased GP dressage horse for $100k, which seemed pretty astronomical to me. I have been asked for a show record once or twice to substantiate value (and one of those times the horse didn’t have a recognized show record yet but they still allowed the increase). And actually I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a written PPE report from a vet either. Perhaps all of these things are more common in HJ land where the horses are more expensive?

[vxf111]

Oh no, they won’t always ask when you get the policy. But when you put in a claim they’ll ask for history and then BOOM… deny you based on the condition being pre-existing

My insurance company makes you list pre-existing conditions when you get the policy and if you knew about something from a PPE you have to list it.

[Beam_Me_Up]

I’ve wondered if the PPE loophole shouldn’t be closed somehow. If you get a horse without a PPE, the requirements to insure are less (I think mine you just have to certify that you know of no pre-existing conditions and the horse has been sound at all gates this month).

The more detailed a PPE you do/submit, the more issues are likely to turn up and be recorded as exclusions.

I’m not sure that the insurance companies can require a PPE, or require a PPE of any particular rigor, but I can see how that is biting them.

[wanderlust]

@Beam_Me_Up

I’m not sure that the insurance companies can require a PPE, or require a PPE of any particular rigor, but I can see how that is biting them.

I have not been asked to submit a PPE for normal medical/mortality up to $100k, but a fairly comprehensive vet cert was required when I started adding loss of use insurance to the policy. So yes, they can and do require a vet cert under some conditions.

[enjoytheride]

I couldn’t get insurance through Merkel. They said the act of Eventing, even if you’re trotting logs makes you uninsurable.

[Dr_Doolittle]

Well, that’s a bit much.

I get my instructor’s liability insurance through them, and have always found them pretty reasonable. Apparently not, though.

[enjoytheride]

I will clarify that they would cover for colic but would exclude major medical and even “Amoeba” level counted as eventing.

[Dr_Doolittle]

Yikes.

[enjoytheride]

Yes. I’m not even sure what I do counts as real eventing lol.

[Bonnie2]

Insurers don’t understand eventing. They understand profit/loss. Show hunters do lots of diagnostics and treatments. They are also, by and large, much more expensive than event horses leading to much higher premiums. Lower level event horses may be at lower risk than upper level eventers but they are also insured for lower values with lower premiums. Event horses don’t make insurance companies money. Follow the money.

[endlessclimb]

Would a reasonable compromise be to continue to insure them, but raise the premium (or deductible) in order for the insurance companies to be able to make money?

[Dr_Doolittle]

Interesting, and makes sense.

Not entirely fair, of course!, but since when is insurance “fair”?

[leighbo009]

Mine are not insured, but a question…

Could I ensure as a HJ or dressage & then “play” in the eventing rings? How do they dictate what your horse identifies as? At the lower levels for sure…

My guys are well rounded and do a bit of everything - maybe because eventing isn’t plentiful in my area, but the difference between a jumper playing in eventing vs a eventer playing in the jumper world? To the insurance company, how to decide what we identify as?

[Rel6]

I asked this. I was told that while yes I could cover my horse as h/j and then event my three events a year, if he got injured at an event or cross country schooling the injury would not be covered. Basically, if he got hurt doing something outside of the scope of his job as a hunter/jumper - its not covered.

Sure, if you have a jumping lesson in a ring on Tuesday, cross country school Thursday, and the horse is lame Friday - maybe you can fudge it to say the horse came up lame after acting within its role as a jumper. But the nervous horse mom in me is too paranoid about a situation where my horse gets injured at an actual event to not carry eventing coverage when we’re eventing.

[enjoytheride]

I also asked about this and it seemed to be a real grey area. If you had your horse registered as a trail horse you go on a trail ride, but then you went to your one Event a year, then a trail ride, the insurance company can say that because you went to an Event it’s possible the issue started there, so not covered.

[trubandloki]

@leighbo009

Could I ensure as a HJ or dressage & then “play” in the eventing rings? How do they dictate what your horse identifies as? At the lower levels for sure…

Well, there is that whole being honest thing…

[leighbo009]

Just a question.

Let’s say I have a low/mid level jumper (3’ ish) and I decide to take them out to an eventing show? Do I have to tell the insurance?

Or an eventer goes to a Hunter/Jumper show & conscently gets injured at that show? Will they not cover because it was not at an event (assuming the event horse is covered?)

Or lets say you do 30% eventing (BN), 35% dressage (1st), and 35% HJ (3’) shows? What is the horse registered as?

When getting insurance, do you have to tell them everything you plan on doing?

Remember, my horses are not insured - so I am not trying to deceive anyone, so I am just asking how it works (or should work).

[Rel6]

I am not sure how it works if you take an eventer to a h/j show (or dressage show) since eventing encompasses jumpers and dressage - maybe someone else can weigh in.

But lets say you have a 3ft hunter you take beginner novice (2’7"). You finish the event, horse is fine, nothing bad happens - my understanding is that in all likelihood, your insurance company will never know and you don’t have an obligation to say “hey, I did this thing outside of coverage.” The risk is if something happens and you need to make a claim.

Lets say you come back from the event and your horse comes up lame. You tell the vet, “he was sound for cross country and stadium on sunday, had monday off and came up lame tuesday.” Horse has a soft tissue injury and you submit the claim. Of course it could have happened in turn out Monday, completely unrelated to the event. But you’re running the risk that the insurance company is going to read that the horse was competing in something outside its covered use and deny the claim.

Sure, someone might lie or omit activity that isn’t within the covered use. But aside from that being obviously not allowed (and also therefore risking coverage), you could jeopardize your horse’s care by not being accurate with a treating vet.

[Amy3996]

@leighbo009

Let’s say I have a low/mid level jumper (3’ ish) and I decide to take them out to an eventing show? Do I have to tell the insurance?

Do you (g) have to tell them? No, not necessarily. But if the horse gets injured at that event, your policy is likely not going to cover anything. Similarly, if your insurance company ever required you to submit justification of value paperwork at renewal (mine does annually now), any results from those events would not be eligible to support the value and could potentially be used to deny coverage entirely.

My TB is insured as a h/j. I bought him out of an eventing program because he just doesn’t want to do it. The horse who was bred to gallop simply doesn’t have the motivation. He’d prefer to rocking horse lope around the hunter ring and look darn cute doing it. I toyed with the idea of dabbling in some very low level eventing (18”-2’ at most), but I’m not brave or particularly committed enough to it. Knowing that it would render him virtually uninsurable (our carrier is one of the ones who dropped eventers entirely)… that was just the final straw in my deciding to stay in the H/J space.