Employer's Liability & Public Liability Insurance - WTF?

[PhilboSE]

It's time for us to renew these again. Imagine a serviced office with 12 people sitting at computers all day. Zero public interaction. Hardly anyone visits customer/client premises. Standard levels of cover required.

Last year we paid £250, process took about 30 minutes to get an acceptable quote. Cheapest renewal quote from the broker we used last year is now £1000. Spend days talking to other brokers, their cheapest quote currently £2500.

Our business hasn't changed at all. Our risks haven't changed. No-one can tell me why our premium is now 400% more than last year.

Anyone recommend a good provider for these basic insurances? Never known it to be so hard before.

[Audicab]

We use Hiscox, pay about £120 for 5 people in an office. Had for 2 years and never gone up. Very easy to deal with.

[Vixpy1]

speak to insurance Jon on here

[Bristol spark]

Im always amazed at how cheap this is.

Im an electrician and have the potential ability to:

Electrocute people
Flood peoples houses/businesses (drilling through water pipes)
Explode peoples houses/businesses (Drill through gas pipe, while smoking)
Break many other things.

Yet i only get charged £300/Year for 10 Mill of cover!


Us trades are obviously a very low risk, its you loony office workers that cause all the claims

[Mandat]

Do you know where the increase has occured? Is it in the EL or PL element?

[williamp]

Am I right to remmeber that PL is a legal requirement (like car insurance), all other insurances are not??? So you dont have to have Emplyers liability???

[Jockman]

williamp said:

Am I right to remmeber that PL is a legal requirement (like car insurance), all other insurances are not??? So you dont have to have Emplyers liability???

I thought both were legally required, the latter being compulsory to cover injuries to workers.

[dalenorth1]

Insurance Jon is your man.

[21TonyK]

I may be way out of date but my understanding was you don't actually need either. But in reality employers liability was key and prof. indem. was a business requirement in terms of contracts and tenders.

Back in the day... (may moons ago) I only took out prof. indem. when I was required by a major contractor. Until them it was all at my own risk! (stupid boy!)

[insurance_jon]

During the year have you increased the material damage section of your policy i.e. Computers etc?

Or had claims?

If not there is no reason for it to go up really

Happy to have a look at it for you. Helped a number of phers out over the years

Message me through my profile if you want to take me up on the offer

[insurance_jon]

Jockman said:

I thought both were legally required, the latter being compulsory to cover injuries to workers.

The only legally required element is employers liability cover

[Jockman]

Cheers Jon.

[Animal]

PhilboSE said:

It's time for us to renew these again. Imagine a serviced office with 12 people sitting at computers all day. Zero public interaction. Hardly anyone visits customer/client premises. Standard levels of cover required.

Last year we paid £250, process took about 30 minutes to get an acceptable quote. Cheapest renewal quote from the broker we used last year is now £1000. Spend days talking to other brokers, their cheapest quote currently £2500.

Our business hasn't changed at all. Our risks haven't changed. No-one can tell me why our premium is now 400% more than last year.

Anyone recommend a good provider for these basic insurances? Never known it to be so hard before.

Assuming your firm is purely office-based (such as an accountant etc) then my firm would be £c.260 plus tax for £1m PL and £10m EL. However, we only write these in conjunction with professional indemnity insurance. £1,000 sounds pretty high unless you're getting a ton of office equipment covered too?

[PhilboSE]

insurance_jon said:

During the year have you increased the material damage section of your policy i.e. Computers etc?

Or had claims?

If not there is no reason for it to go up really

Happy to have a look at it for you. Helped a number of phers out over the years

Message me through my profile if you want to take me up on the offer

Cheers All, didn't get around to contacting insurance jon as I had generated a lot of callbacks from various brokers.

In simple terms, absolutely nothing had changed about the business. No claims. No reason for it to have quadrupled in price. However, best prices that 2 brokers offered me was £2500 (TEN times more than I paid last year) and Hiscox wanted £900 direct.

Then a bizarre thing happened. I was talking to a broker and he said that he couldn't generate a competitive quote "because we had priced all the staff individually", but that he had a colleague across the room who could quote for a "group policy". He transferred me over and within minutes I had a new policy set up with RSA, and this policy included lots of extras like contents insurance, for £240.

I have no idea if everyone was quoting on an individual basis which led to the big numbers, and why this much cheaper "group policy" (which was pretty much what I thought I was asking for i.e. employer's and public liability insurance for a Ltd company) wasn't the default, but there you.

So, if anyone else is quoted stupidly high rates for these insurances, make sure they are quoting for a "group policy" not individuals.