Cheap Public Liability Insurance is something that is searched for online hundreds of times a month. With most businesses coming out of the recent COVID pandemic with large business losses and a whole year worth of income that needs be made up the need for cheap public liability insurance has increased dramatically. Our advice to these business owners is to ensure that they know what they are getting themselves into before they see a cheap premium and give it the nod of approval.
Most business owners know that good isnt always cheap and cheap isn’t always good and it’s exactly the same when it comes to your insurance policies. Not just your public liability insurance but your commercial truck insurance, business insurance but even your professional indemnity insurance. We understand that there is a need for cheaper insurance which is why our ultimate goal is to work with you, maximising your cover within your budget without reducing your policy to minimal coverage.
What should I look out for with cheap public liability insurance policies?
Just because the policy is cheap doesn’t always mean that it’s bad. However, when something is too good to be true than it usually is. With our quoting platform, we have access to 10 insurers that get sent the exact same quoting form, same questions are answered and then all insurers submit their pricing one by one. If the average premium is coming back at $1,000 and then we get a quote back from an insurer that comes in at $500 then I start looking for the “catch”. Why is this insurer providing us such a cheap policy when the others aren’t.
On occasion, sometimes insurers have a really good claims year which allows them to open up their risk appetite to accept more risk from certain occupation classes or, they have noticed that claims cost for specific occupations have come down so they can releave some of the pressure on policy holders who are the ones paying the premium. More often than not, when we actually look into the quote and the details that the insurer has sent back there is usually an exclusion or some sort of endorsement that has been applied which reduces the insurers cover.
Here is an example of a policy that came through yesterday from a plumbing contractor:
The above image is a snippet that we have taken directly off their policy. This policy was cheaper than most others by a long shot. What does this exclusion mean?
It basically means that if this plumbing contract is digging a trench beside a house and this leads to property damage than it is not covered. Property damage could be things like a sinking slab, damage to the property for posts losing their support. This could even be from cutting into a wall to change the mixer of a shower in a bathrrom. Although chances might be slim of the damage actually occuring, there is still a chance that it could occur. This is just one exclusion that we find quite frequently especially for excavation contracts, plumbers and other occuptions that frequently dig trenches.
How do I find these exclusions?
Insurance policies all follow the same format. The insurer issues a policy document which outlines all of the conditions of the policy this is then used in combination with the insurance schedule. The insurance schedule is not the same as the certificate of insurance that you provide your contractors.
The insurance schedule will outline your level cover, the limit of your cover and any additional covers or restrictions that will overlap the policy wording.