How much would your vet fee cover actually pay out?
Ask any dressage yard and you'll often hear a version of the same story. A horse goes lame, or colics, or ends up needing surgery that nobody saw coming, and the owner assumes the insurance will cover it. Whilst it usually does cover something, the question to ask beforehand is how much.
Research from the University of Nottingham and Bell Equine Veterinary Clinic looked at 248 colic cases across 18 UK veterinary hospitals and found the average cost of colic surgery now stands at £7,9051. Most vet fee policies cap what they'll pay somewhere between £5,000 and £7,500 – and that range has barely shifted since 2018, even though referral and diagnostic costs have increased since then2. A policy that felt generous a few years ago might not stretch far enough today, and it's entirely possible to be insured and still be left with a shortfall.
This matters more for dressage horses than most. They tend to be of higher value, carefully produced, and insured for meaningful sums, which can make some owners assume the sum insured is doing more work than it really is. Cover for death and theft, and cover for vet fees, are two different things protecting against two different outcomes. It's the vet fees claim you're far more likely to need. Most owners never make a mortality claim in a horse's lifetime. Very few get through a competition career without a vet bill of some kind, whether it be a scan, a course of treatment, or something bigger.
It's worth sitting with that for a moment, because it runs against how most people actually shop for cover. A horse bought for a significant sum gets insured for that value first, and vet fees cover gets added almost as an afterthought, at whatever limit the policy happens to default to. Flip that round, though, and the claim you're statistically likely to make deserves at least as much thought as the one you hope never to make.
The injuries that dressage produces aren't the same as those in other disciplines either. Collected work puts real strain on tendons, ligaments and joints, so the soft tissue and hind-end problems that come with schooling and competing at any level are a different pattern of risk to say a showjumper's fall or a hunter's cross-country tumble. A policy built around a short list of named events won't necessarily pick up a lameness work-up or a course of joint treatment, whereas one built around ordinary accident, sickness and disease will. Colic remains the single biggest cost across all disciplines, but it's worth checking your own policy covers the pattern of risk your horse faces, not just the headline event.
This is also where the market is narrower than most owners realise. Many policies bundle vet fees in with mortality cover, on the basis that you take the whole package or none of it. KBIS however, offer full accident, sickness and disease cover as a genuine stand-alone product – without requiring you to insure the horse for a value or take out cover types you don't want. Our Aggregate Veterinary Fees policy covers up to £10,000 in the policy year and runs through to age 30, so cover doesn’t have to step down just because your horse is getting older.
Regardless of what policy you have in place, it’s recommended that you check what you are actually have cover for. Look at your policy's incident and aggregate limits and ask whether they would cover a real referral bill today, not the bill they were priced against when you first took the policy out. Ask whether you're paying for mortality cover you don't really need, when what you actually want is protection for the vet bill. And if you've been putting off insuring altogether because full cover felt disproportionate to a horse you compete rather than one you'd sell, it's worth knowing that stand-alone options exist for exactly that situation.
British Dressage's winter season is just getting under way, with a full calendar of competition and training ahead. It's as good a moment as any to take five minutes and look again at what your cover protects you against, and whether it still matches the horse and the level you're riding at. A conversation with your insurer costs nothing. A shortfall discovered at the vets does.
To find out more about KBIS’ Aggregate Veterinary Fees cover and to speak to a member of their team, call 0345 230 2323 or visit kbis.co.uk
Sources:
1. Horse & Hound: https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/cost-of-colic-referral-frequently-exceeds-insurance-cover-research-shows-904404
2. Insurance Business UK: https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com/uk/news/breaking-news/equine-insurance-cover-lags-behind-colic-costs-study-finds-549594.aspx