An article in Business High Street reports how major insurance company Cornhill are encouraging people who work from home to make sure they are adequately insured, whether they are working for a company, or self employed. Apparently the self employed are much more likely to be under-insured and should consider public liability, employers liability and any other business insurance on the go.

This really does sound dull as dishwater but in the UK if you run a home business and have anyone working for you, you are obliged to have employers liability insurance. It doesn’t matter whether you have a team of builders working on a site or someone helping you stuff envelopes in your back room. If you are employing them then you need the insurance. It covers claims made for all manner of things, but for example if an employee trips over your kids toy and breaks their leg, employers liability insurance will cover the compensation they can claim.
You don’t of course require employers liability insurance if it’s only yourself that works at home. Unless you are clumsy and feel like suing yourself for it.

I’m probably posting these home business insurance items all the wrong way around, but for a home business that operates without customers coming to the house, or employees, the next insurance one would naturally think of is protecting the equipment and stock that you keep in your home.

Some home business owners assume that this stock and contents insurance will be taken care of by their home insurance. This unfortunately is often not the case. It is advisable to check to see if you need to buy separate contents and stock insurance for your home business. That way you are covering your potential to make an income. Imagine if all your stock got nicked, went up in flames or your computer was stolen? What then? Shut the business down in most cases. Not having home business stock and contents insurance is a big gamble to take when it’s your livelyhood on the line.

Of course in some people’s cases all they have is a computer at home and they can provide their own insurance by backing up all the data that’s on it regularly and storing it elsewhere, preferably not in the same house. With the advent of high-speed broadband, online data storage is an option that more and more people can take to insure their main home business asset - their data.

So, if your home business means you keep stock or equipment at home, check your home policy, assess the risk to your business and look into buying home business stock and contents insurance if the risk is great enough. This is one insurance product that could be worth the money.

Running a home business can be a way to avoid business premises and rates but there are plenty pitfalls to get you and one of those is the tricky issue of insurance. Generally your main home insurance policy will not cover any of your business activities, assets or stock so you will want to make alternative arrangements for home business insurance if you feel the risk justifies it.
Home business insurance policies cover many different aspects depending on just how your business operates from home. Public Liability, Stock Insurance, Loss of Earnings Insurance and loads more are all available to you.

Over the next few posts I’m going to look into these types of insurance and see what seems sensible and which types are maybe just for the extra cautious.