Just wanted to remind everyone to check your declaration page with farm/ home owners/ equine liability insurance.
Got my renewal last week. The policy was to renew June 1. Buried on page 3 of the declaration was a notice that Farmer’s Mutual was canceling our equine liability and they would no longer be doing equine liability policies. Of course, it did not lower our rates at all.
I called our agent immediately, and found she was about to call me over the issue. In the end, she found us another company, was able to combine all policies, add more coverage and save us $800 per year.
I carry a separate, specific private horse owner’s liability policy because I do not trust our homeowners or umbrella liability policy to actually work for a horse-related incident. There is no specific coverage wording, and the agent could not reassure me beyond saying they could submit a test claim and see what happened. So I may be over-insured, and I am certainly poorer, but at least I feel a bit better about the four year old pony gelding who is still exploring the world with his teeth, as they do.
I called our insurance agent, who was getting ready to notify us of the cancellation of our equine liability. This started a search for a different insurance company and a policy that would provide more coverage.
We ended up with a company that could do our farm policy as well as auto, and an umbrella policy our financial advisor recommend we carry.
Even with adding the umbrella policy, we are now saving $1200 a year with better coverage.
The moral of the story- not only check your declaration page, but it does not hurt to shop your insurance policies regularly too!
And they specifically cover horses/livestock, or commercial needs, or ?
My USAA homeowners covers any injury caused by any animal I own, and I got an additional rider for “attractive nuisance” that is geared more towards my adorably fluffy but not friendly dog who people literally reach out to touch while he’s barking at them than the horses.
But I sometimes think I want more insurance. Because. Yanno. Humans suck.
Thank you for clarification! Since I don’t board or anything, it didn’t occur to me to include that. They did ask questions about if my dog had ever bit anyone or had a history of aggression when I added my rider for additional insurance, which seemed odd.
I didn’t ask about specific species, although here they are covering both horses and cattle for liability. Our horses are strictly for our use only- I use them on the farm to check cattle and fences, but I consider that as conditioning for the trail riding I do off the farm. We do not board or do lessons, and do not haul for others.
I know exactly what you mean @TheJenners about wanting more coverage. One thing that prompted us to pick up the umbrella policy was a meeting with a financial advisor, provided by my husband’s employer.
We reviewed our retirement funds and plans, and then talked about the advisor about things like our mortgage, farm value, and insurance coverages.
Their recommendation was to add the umbrella policy with an additional $2-3M in coverage. One thing I don’t think we considered is that as we age, we have more assets and thus more to lose. The discussion with the financial advisor made sense, and we thought it seemed like good advice as they were hired strictly to look out for our best interest, as opposed to trying to sell us something.
That was my reasoning, and while I don’t consider myself “older,” I do have a lot of assets here on the farm that I have worked hard for my whole life - and I don’t need some trespassing stranger with scenes from the Black Stallion dancing in their eyes to try to take all that away.
Exactly! We are within 10 years of retirement (although I am still in my 20s in my mind), and I think we spent so many years working our butts off or scrimping to make ends meet, that you don’t realize there is a shift as things accumulate and/ or appreciate.
The meeting with the financial advisor was eye opening for me. He brought up things, like the umbrella policy, that I hadn’t thought about but make sense.
