Sorry it’s an insurance question

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Decided to not cover for veterinary fees and put the money in am insurance pot instead. We are with the NFu where public liability can only be taken out if it includes cover for loss of animal. This means our insurance is £1000 for 4 ponies They are insured at quite a low cost (cob 2k, highland 4k, sect A £500 and sect D £4). Would I be better going with an other company and just paying liability? Thoughts appreciated. I do have money in the bank to cover emergencies and loss and I’m not happy with how much insurance I’m paying generally in life 😁

British Horse Society Gold membership includes liability, and is often recommended as a cheap way to get this. I haven't experienced it myself, like you I have expensive NFU cover and keep wondering whether I should just self-fund.

Ours just have the BHS gold liability, really for if she escapes and caused an accident . She is retired and 32 this year so will not be getting anything desperately expensive done if she was ill.

I have BHS gold membership so have public liability through that. We had vet fees insurance when we got dd’s first horse but after a horror year where we rinsed through £10,000 plus of vets’ bills in under ten months there wasn’t a lot of him that was still insured. So we moved him onto catastrophe-only insurance for a while. We’ve rather collected horses since then 😳 and currently have six so monthly/yearly premiums for all of them would be eye watering (and with exclusions for anything we might want to claim for for the older ones). I’m lucky in that I have enough savings to cover emergencies, without that we wouldn’t have six horses and would probably have some form of insurance 🤷‍♀️

That is how we got when we were at our peak which was 4 , most of the big vet bills I’ve had were when they were 20+ and insurance was either too expensive or there were too many exclusions . Horses are very costly especially if you keep them until the end , which we do and then you also get a costly bill for their cremation

I think there is limit to how many horses are covered for liability with BHS gold cover though? Think it’s designed for those with one to two not more.

Gold family covers 4 , single is 2 . I’ve always owned with my sister so worked for us .

Have you looked at Harry hall?

They do liability and external injury cover with/without colic surgery.

My old boy is with them. Not the colic cover tho, as it’s only the surgery, nothing else and I wouldn’t put him through it.

I just have the harry hall cover for £4.50 a month. I had bhs gold cover but HH was cheaper so I changed this year.

I believe pony club membership and membership of some affiliated bodies includes basic public liability for the member. If you or any of the other riders in your family are a member of anything like that, it may be worth checking out the policy and working out if it's sufficient for your needs. If it covers even just one of the ponies, it would reduce your bill?

Just be aware that BHS gold/harry hall etc are group policies/policies of last resort so are a very different level of cover to public liability policies like NFU.

It might be thats all you need but it is worth researching the difference so you understand your level of cover & what circumstances the policy will pay out.