Understanding PHOL: Essential Equine Insurance Coverage

PHOL is Personal Horse Owners Liability = PHOL an insurance policy for your horse's bad behavior.

Most people believe their homeowner’s policy covers the possible liabilities their horse may cause. For some of you, that may be the case but for most of you, a good read through your policy will expose holes in your coverage when it comes to your horse(s). Most insurance companies that provide homeowner’s insurance aren’t horse people and insuring horses isn’t in their wheelhouse, leaving gaps in the coverage.

Your horse resting in the neighbor's hammock.

I am going to throw some scenarios out there for you to think about:

A) You and your friend trailer together to an event. Your horse throws a fit in the trailer and damages your friend’s trailer. Your friend might say, its ok, it happens, its horses, but you really don’t want there to be hard feelings, you want to make it right, this is your friend. Your homeowners probably will not cover the damage to your friend’s trailer, but PHOL will.

B) You are out at a camp & ride; your horse is tucked in a stall, and you are by the campfire. A horse loving little girl walks down the barn aisle passing out carrots to all the horses, and your overzealous horse takes a finger with the carrot.

The next bite of carrot will include the thumb.

Your horse is tied to the trailer, somebody brings their kid to pet your horse when your back is turned, the horse stomps a fly and lands on someone’s flip flopped foot. Your homeowners probably will not cover the injury to the foot or finger. PHOL fills the gaps in your homeowners.

Your friend has a house near the forest you love riding in. Your friend invites you to stay for a weekend and you will ride and have a relaxing weekend. Your horse decides he is Houdini, escapes the fence and decides to checkout the neighborhood. In his adventure, he wrecks a neighbor’s garden, dents another neighbor’s car, knocks over a kid’s jungle gym and lastly kicks the neighbor’s dog who is injured and needs vet care.

That is pretty close, could have been bad!

Who is paying for this? Your friend’s homeowner is not covering your horse’s path of destruction. Your homeowner is not likely covering it because the horse was not at your premises. Who pays?

I call PHOL, peace of mind for about $275. You can list up to 5 horses on a policy and give yourself some assurance that you are covered for these mishaps.

Let’s talk tack. On most homeowner’s policies, tack isn’t covered or covered at full value, again because most homeowners’ policies are written for the masses and the masses don’t have tack. If you buy PHOL, some companies allow you to add on insurance for tack.

Some insurance companies, if you have a mortality policy (Life Insurance) on your horse, you can add on PHOL for an additional fee.

As a group, horse people stick together, we are close knit and not a very litigious. We know an accident involving ahorse can happen to any of us. However tight and understanding equestrians are among other horse people, sometimes you need to just make things right when something goes wrong. This is where PHOL insurance comesin.

If you need more information about PHOL, please reach out to LB Farm & Equine Insurance ,www.LeannBauer.com Jean Marie Schneider, Jean@LeannBauer.com or 917-796-7429