Being a handyman might not be considered a trade qualification, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have access to trade quality insurance.
We deal with thousands of tradesmen and women, and handymen make up an important part of this group.
Given that we insure so many handymen, we know a thing or two about the types of insurance you need.
In this guide we’ll run through those insurance types, including what they cover and how much they cost.
Public liability insurance
This is without a doubt the most commonly required form of insurance for handymen.
Virtually all real estate agencies and property managers will require that you hold public liability insurance before you can undertake work for them.
Aside from that, it’s simply a very good form of protection for any manual worker.
What it covers is the risk that you cause property damage or personal injury to another person as a result of your business activities.
For a handyman this could be as simple as knocking over an expensive vase whilst carrying materials through a customer’s home.
On the personal injury side, it could involve a customer tripping over your extension cord and suffering an injury as a result.
Public liability claims can range from a few hundred dollars for minor property damage, right up to millions for a serious claim involving personal injury or death.
With $5 million worth of cover available to handymen for less than $500, it’s great value protection in case something goes wrong on the job.
Professional indemnity insurance
The vast majority of handymen will have no need for professional indemnity, however we have included it for one reason – real estate agencies!
We get a lot of calls from handymen telling us the real estate agency or property manager they are undertaking work for requires them to have professional indemnity.
The answer is that you don’t need it, but plenty of agencies have it listed on their standard template.
In all cases that we’ve dealt with, a public liability policy has been sufficient to meet the agency’s requirements.
We’ve written a separate guide to specifically cover this issue: Do handymen need professional indemnity?
Tool insurance
As a handyman the range of jobs you undertake can be huge, and you need a great collection of tools to suit those different jobs.
How much work could you do if some or all of those tools were stolen? Probably not much.
Unfortunately tool theft is a major issue for tradies, and this has made tool insurance all the more important.
A decent tool insurance policy will cover your gear for theft following forced entry, fire damage or damage caused in a vehicle collision or rollover.
The cost to insure $5,000 worth of tools is less than $300, which makes it pretty cheap protection considering the cost of replacing just one decent power tool.
Income protection
As a self-employed handyman you enjoy some freedoms in terms of choosing your hours and workload.
On the downside however, you lose access to some benefits such as sick leave and workers compensation.
If you can’t work due to an injury or illness, you simply aren’t going to be earning money.
This is where income protection becomes important.
Income protection can cover up to 75% of your income for a period of time whilst you are unable to work due to injury or illness.
Similar policies are known as ‘sickness and accident’ or ‘accident and illness’ insurance. Whilst these policies are similar, there can be some very important differences.
We recommend speaking with a qualified financial adviser regarding income protection, and of course we have access to experts who can help you with this.
More information
For public liability and tool insurance we can provide instant quotes and coverage via our website.
Simply visit our compare quotes page and follow the prompts.
If you’d rather speak to someone our team are available during business hours on 1800 808 800.
Our team are experts when it comes to handyman insurance and will be able to assist regardless of whether you’re just starting your handyman business or are a well established national operation.
