Operating a business from home? You need to check your home insurance. 

It is quite common for businesses to start and often continue to operate from home. As remote working has accelerated since Covid, the ability to set up a business from home has never been easier. Whilst operating as a one man band with a laptop, tends not to cause many insurance issues, what happens if your business is manual in nature or members of the public visit your home?

Having a business operating from your home exposes you to liability claims and can invalidate your home insurance. 

If members of the public visit your premises (so for example you may run a physiotherapy operation from your home) then you need to have public liability cover. This is even more prevalent for the likes of motor traders where you may be selling vehicles from your home and people are dropping/picking up vehicles. If you are repairing vehicles at home you should also have defective workmanship cover and if you have any employees, Employers Liability cover..

How does all this effect your home insurance policy?

If you are running any sort of business from your home, then your home insurer needs to be made aware of it or it will almost certainly cause you a problem if you have any type of claim (not just a claim associated with your business).

So I just ring up my house insurer and tell them and all will be fine?

Not quite.

Most standard insurers do not want to provide house cover to those that run a business from their premises. As insurance advisers we often tell clients in this situation to obtain a quotation from another house insurer before approaching your existing insurer. If your existing insurer does not want to offer cover, then they could cancel your policy.

We have access to non standard house insurers that will offer this cover in most circumstances (usually on the agreement that the business has a public liability policy in place). If your existing insurer has not agreed to this or you haven’t moved to a new insurer, you almost certainly don’t have any house cover at present even though you’ve paid for a policy. 

If you would like some additional information on home cover when working from home contact the experts on (061)226722 or Info@powerinsurances.ie