All About Insurance
Horse and pony ownership is a costly business and carries with it a weight of responsibility whether your involvement is purely pleasure, competitive or commercial.
Insurance is a service. It exists to help protect you, the owner, against the unpredictable and sometimes expensive costs that can be associated with ownership.
When purchasing insurance it is always worthwhile to shop around and fully understand your terms and conditions. There are a number of areas that you should consider when choosing an insurance policy:
- Firstly make sure you are aware of the excess you have to pay, some companies have a fixed excess which range between £100 - £200 where other companies who may offer a cheaper premium will have an excess of 15% of the whole claim (e.g. if your total claim is £3000 you will have to pay £450 excess).
- The other areas to consider are the amount you will be able to claim this usually varies between £3000 - £5000 per claim and ensuring you know if the policy is per incident or per condition.
- Some insurance companies will put a limit on the amount of money that can be claimed on diagnostic investigations and some will pay for a percentage of MRI, Bone scans and hospitalisation; so always make sure you are aware of these pitfalls - sometimes the cheapest premium is not always the cheapest in the long run.
Making a Claim
If you are unfortunate enough to have to make a claim on your insurance policy, we have a good working relationship with the major insurance companies and will endeavour to help and assist you with your claim.
- It is the responsibility of you, the owner to notify the insurance company that the horse is undergoing treatment.
- As the requirements of the various companies differ, please ensure that you keep your insurance company updated and that you comply with their requirements.
- Please keep us informed of any restrictions or exclusions that may be in place.
- The agreement is between you the owner and insurance company.
- Once you have decided to make a claim, please request a claim form from your insurance company and complete your section.
- We only do direct settlement claims with certain insurance companies so please contact the office to confirm this. If a direct claim is agreed ensure you select the section on your claim form to pay the vet directly.
- Ensure your excess is paid to the practice.
- Once you have completed the claim form post it to the practice, the vet will complete their section and the relevant invoices will be sent with the claim form to the insurance company.
- If the claim is ongoing and your horse requires further treatment a continuation claim form may be required. If you contact your insurance company, they will advise you if a continuation claim form is required, or if they are happy for you to forward a copy of our monthly statement with the claim reference number clearly marked.
- If a continuation form is required, you can request this form and complete your relevant sections and forward to us for the vet to complete and we will send it onto the insurance company with the relevant invoices.
- There is a fee for completion of claim forms which is payable by the insurer not the insurance company.