Small Business Insurance For Plumbers

Small Business Insurance for Plumbers facts:

  • Plumbers Insurance is expensive compared to other common trades
  • Victorian Plumbers pay the higher rates than their counterparts in other states
  • Plumbing drives a higher number of claims and greater damage than other trades
  • Many insurers simply avoid insuring plumbers or charge too much for this very reason
  • It’s important to know which insurers prefer Plumbing to get favourable long term insurance outcomes.
  • There are exclusions that can make your policy useless if you haven’t checked carefully

CoverTradie sorts out your Plumbing Insurance properly saving you time, money and above all headaches during claim times.

Insurance Types

The main issues we discuss in this article today are:

  • What type of insurance do plumbers need
  • How much does plumbers liability insurance cost

What type of insurance do plumbers need?

Plumbers need the following insurances to manage their business risk:

Public Liability Insurance

Public Liability Insurance protects your business against a financial loss if, due to your work activities, you end up damaging someone else’s property or causing an injury to someone.

For Example: You’ve just plumbed a client’s fancy new fridge to the water supply. Straight after the installation, your customer has gone on holidays for a few days. The plumbing has failed in the mean time flooding the home resulting in a claim for $20,000 damages to carpets and wooden flooring.

Your insurance comes handy to protect you there otherwise you could be out of pocket to settle the damages.

Commercial Vehicle Insurance

It is no secret that the premiums for commercial vehicle insurance are way higher compared to private use only vehicles.

Data shows & its common sense that vehicles driven for generating income tend to be on the road a lot more compared to private use vehicles.

More time on the road means, higher chances of having an accident. That’s just due to other driver’s poor driving form and sometimes, you may be fatigued or distracted which results in a crash.

You need to have the right insurance policy set up for you as using a vehicle for business but insuring it for private use can land you into a bit of trouble.

Believe it or not, many brokers have set up policies for tradies that incorrectly list vehicles for private use where as they should be listed as business use.

But hey…they do it because it saves the client some money in the short term. Only when the problem comes people realise the consequences of incorrect policies.

We can help you with sorting out the right insurance for your vehicle.

Plant & Equipment Insurance

Not every one needs Plant and Equipment insurance however if you are into drainage type of work where you use excavators etc., you need this insurance to cover you against many types of risk associated with plant and equipment usage.

Property & Tools Insurance

When you own assets, there is always a risk of assets getting stolen, damaged due to natural events etc. There are ways to protect your assets.

For example: If you have a van full of tools and stock etc. and that van happened to be in a road accident. Fortunately the driver escaped with only minor injuries however the tools and stock in the van was totally destroyed, will your van insurance cover the cost of lost stock and tools?

Should you be insured for that risk? Give us a call!

Insurance Types

Personal Accident Insurance

Trades and Construction sector have one of the highest rates of personal accidents out of all occupations.

Many tradies have found themselves unable to work due to accidental injuries.

It’s really important to protect your income should you be unable to work due to an injury particularly when you have responsibilities of family, kids & mortgages to pay.

Personal Accident Insurance comes handy there as it serves to replace your income whilst you are recovering from you injury. Some might argue there’s workers compensation.

The coverage on workers compensation can depend on your business structure so you may or mayn’t have cover as a business owner depending on your state and business structure.

If you are a sole trader, Personal Accident Insurance is a must because it protects your income.

There will be worksites that would ask you to provide a proof of insurance (certificate of currency) before you are allowed to work there.

Another important point is that if you play sport say football (roundball or oval-ball), any injuries on the field are not covered under workers compensation insurance but can be covered under Personal Accident Insurance.

That’s correct, your income can be protected for sporting related injuries also subject to certain exclusions for high risk activities.

Plumbers Public Liability Insurance Cost

One thing you will be interested in knowing that Plumbers pay more for their insurance than any other common trade. See chart below for comparison.

Since the cost is high, it’s important to do plenty of research before you but and that exactly this article will help you understand.

Lets look at it a bit further:

As you would expect, the cost of public liability insurance for plumbers varies a lot. For small businesses with a turnover of $100,000 for a year, we have seen prices as per below:

Cheapest $          604
Average $       1,340
Highest $       2,750
Prices include Public Liability Insurance limit of $5 Million, $10 Million & $20 Million

So who gets a policy as low as $604 vs someone as high as $2750?

It is indeed a wide range of prices and there are different factors that result in the variation in those prices. Some of those factors are:

  • Location of your business (State level variation)
  • Limit of Liability ($5 Million vs $10 Million vs $20 Million cover)
  • Turnover of your business also has an impact which we discuss later.

Location of your business (State level variation)

Location of your business has a big impact on prices. Plumbers in Victoria pay a lot more than their counterparts in other states.

Price comparison for $5Million liability cover for a plumbers with turnover of $100,000.

Limit of Liability ($5 Million vs $10 Million vs $20 Million cover)

As the liability limit goes up, so does the premium. If you were wondering what the change is the cheapest premiums we saw for different liability limits are below.

Coverage LevelPremium
$5 Million $          604
$10 Million $          756
$20 Million $          930

Turnover of your business

As you would expect, as the business grows i.e. an increase in turnover, the risk increase too.

You are doing more jobs which simply means higher chances of a claim from an insurers perspective.

The chart below shows how important it is to be with an insurer that offers competitive pricing.

In all, select a broker who knows what they are doing so they can help you get where you want to – FASTER.

CoverTradie is a specialist insurance broker for tradesmen. If we can be of help to you, please give us a call. If you found this article useful, please consider sharing it on Facebook to help us get the word out.

Insurance Types

Why is Plumbers Public Liability Insurance Cost so high?

Dealing with fluids whether liquid or gas which both have the tendency to escape results in damages which causes higher volume of claims.

The more frequent the claims and severe the losses that result from those claims, the higher the cost to fix the issues and then results in higher price. Insurers by law have to collect enough premiums so that they are able to pay the claims hence why the pricing is significantly higher than other trades.

Which insurer offers the best Public Liability Insurance for Plumbers?

This one is a very subjective question. Is it best in terms of price, coverage or claims service.  Where there is no variation in the policy coverage, obviously the lower the price the better it is for the customer.

CoverTradie always finds you the cheapest deal unless there is serious service issues from the insurer perspective that we may have experienced.

Every broker will have a different experience with different insurers that why you often hear them say “This insurer pays the claims.” It is important to note though that all insurers have to abide by the rules set by AFCA for any disputes that arise, which means that if there is a dispute and the policy wording has to cover a claim, insurers can’t get away with it. As you broker, we act as the go between anyway. We keep them honest. That’s our job. 

Can I pay my policy by the month?

Yes, with CoverTradie you can pay by the month. Give us a call.

CoverTradie