The Policies and Their Schedules
Start with the policies themselves, filed as full schedules rather than certificates of cover alone. For the horses that usually means mortality and vet-fee or major-medical cover; for the yard it means public liability, buildings and contents, tack and equipment, and the trailer or horsebox on its own policy or a vehicle extension. If anyone else's horses live on your yard, care, custody and control cover is the schedule to check twice, because standard liability wording often excludes animals in your charge. Against each policy note the renewal date, the excess you would actually pay, and the exclusions in plain words — the exclusions are the part owners discover too late, usually mid-claim.
Evidence Collected Before You Need It
A claim is argued from evidence, and the strongest evidence is gathered on an ordinary day. Photograph every insured horse from both sides and the front, and repeat the set when condition or colour changes with the seasons. Keep a tack inventory that lists saddles, bridles and rugs with their makers, serial numbers where they exist, and a photograph of each valuable piece; tack theft is one of the commonest yard claims and the hardest to prove from memory. Add purchase receipts, professional valuations for horses whose value is insured above their purchase price, and copies of passports and microchip numbers stored away from the yard itself, so a fire or theft cannot take the proof along with the property.
Horse Records an Insurer Will Ask For
When a horse is the subject of a claim, the insurer's first requests are predictable: the purchase vetting certificate, the vaccination record, and the clinical history covering the condition being claimed. Vet-fee policies commonly exclude problems the horse has shown before, so a tidy, continuous treatment history protects you as much as it informs them — gaps and missing visits invite arguments about when a condition started. For loss-of-use or high-value cover, competition results and breeding records support the insured value, so file those beside the policy rather than in a results folder elsewhere. Keep claim correspondence itself, too: a closed claim's paperwork is part of the horse's insurance history at renewal.
Yard-Level Paperwork
The yard generates its own insurance record family. Written livery or boarding agreements set out who is responsible for what when a horse is injured or causes damage, and insurers take a close interest in them after an incident. An accident and incident log — dated, brief, factual — is the yard document most often wished for and least often kept. Maintenance records matter as well: fence repairs, arena surface work, electrical checks and fire extinguisher servicing all demonstrate the yard is run with reasonable care, which is the ground liability arguments are fought on. Freelance grooms and instructors working on the yard should have their own cover noted on file.
When something does go wrong, speed and completeness decide how the claim feels, and KinsLe's Pet Passport holds each horse's identity papers and vet history in one packet alongside your policy schedules, ready to send as a single bundle.