A lot of tradesmen look at contractors all risk insurance as a real burden, purely due to the fact that it is more money coming out of there pocket for something they think they do not need. If you are reading this it is more than likely that someone has tipped you off about this sort of cover and that you do need to protect your company a bit more than what you think you did. Contractors all risk insurance covers you for your contract / cost of contract / public liability employer’s liability/ own plant / hired in plant, hired in plant charges / employees tools / site huts etc.
The scope of cover is comprehensive and totally covers you for your works. We get a lot of tradesmen saying, oh its OK my public liability will be fine. Wrong, the public liability only covers you for damage to third party property, nowhere does it state it will cover you for the contract you are working on. A perfect example would be a loft conversion. Let’s say 4 weeks into the job, it is almost complete and there is an electrical fault and the works are in such a bad state of repair all has to be ripped out and the project will have to be started all over. But not only this, but the damage has gone through into other areas of the clients house. What would happen is the public liability insurance would pick up the damage to the original parts of the house… but the loft .. this is definitely not covered .. Which is where you need your contractors all risk insurance. This will then pick up the cost of the project you were working on, in relation to what you have declared to your insurers.
This cover as stated above also covers you for any theft of plant. So you may have a 20k digger on site that gets stolen. If this is your own plant and it has been taken then that is a lot of money to lose. But when you have a contractors all risk insurance all will be covered.
Insurance for property developers is usually the contractors all risk policy. This is due to the fact that a property developer under a standard policy cannot insure his own property for buildings insurance whilst building works are being carried out. The contractors all risk policy will cover them properly.
So as you can see the contractors all risk insurance is a fantastic tool to have and we have a lot of providers who can office us fantastic rates which in turn help the tradesmen keep their costing down and make more profit.
