As a self-employed tradie, why would you bother using an insurance broker?
Your business is fairly straightforward, you can get quotes from most insurance companies online, and why pay extra fees to a middle-man, right?
Not so fast!
Just like you’d never recommend that your customers DIY their building work, there are good reasons not to DIY your business insurance.
In this guide we’ll look at a few of the myths around using an insurance broker, and why it’s a good idea for any trade business, even if you’re just starting out.
Note: This guide is more targeted at the smaller 1-5 staff trade businesses. Larger trade businesses are generally well aware of the benefits of using an insurance broker.
What will an insurance broker do for me?
The short answer is… They’ll save you time and money!
But there’s a lot more to it.
At the quote stage
For starters, a broker will have a chat to you about exactly what it is your trade business does.
You might consider yourself a typical electrician, but when we did a little deeper we might find business activities that fall outside of what most insurance companies consider normal for an electrician.
We can then make sure we place your cover with an insurance company or underwriting agency that will agree to cover those activities.
What does it matter? Well if you have a standard electrician policy and need to make a claim for an activity that falls outside of the insurer’s standard activities, you could find that your claim is declined.
Once we know which insurers are going to be right for you, we can compare premiums to get the most competitive quotes for you.
So not only are we looking to get you the lowest insurance cost, but most importantly the lowest cost for a policy that will properly meet your needs.
During the year
There are so many potential benefits during the year, but the one that is most relevant to most tradies is that you don’t have to deal with a cell centre.
Every Trade Risk client, no matter how small in size, has their own designated account manager. If you need anything at all, you can call or email your account manager and know that you’ll be looked after.
This save you time by not having to wait in a call centre queue, and gives you the confidence that you’re dealing with a local expert every time and not potentially an outsourced call centre.
Claims
This really falls into the “during the year” category, but is so important that it deserves its own category.
There are multiple benefits as a tradie having an insurance broker at the time of a claim – especially a trade insurance broker.
We’re on your side
If you purchase your business insurance direct through an insurance company, in the event of a claim it’s you against them.
Of course they have to do the right thing, and in most cases it will probably be all okay, but if things get a little grey they’re going to be on their own side, not your side.
When you use a broker, you have an expert on your side. Although we have great relationships with the insurance companies, we always on your side and will fight for the best outcome for you.
We could give numerous examples of where we have fought against an insurance company because we weren’t happy with their claim offer, and have secured a better result for our client.
We’re experts in the trade
Talking more specifically about Trade Risk rather than general insurance brokers, our other big advantage is that we only deal with tradies.
We’ve dealt with hundreds of claims for electricians, carpenters and plenty of other trades.
Of course we don’t know how to build a deck or install solar panels, but we know how to deal with the typical claims that come from these activities.
Our higher level of understanding when it comes to trade businesses and our greater level of experience with trade related claims enabled us to fight for the best outcome for you.
How much extra does it cost for a tradie to use an insurance broker?
One of our first jobs as your insurance broker is to find you the most competitive premium for cover which is appropriate for your business.
So if we can find you a more competitive premium than anyone else, including the direct insurers, then we’re actually saving you money rather than costing you more!
There’s also the time – and therefore money – that we can save you by doing the running around for you.
You might be able to spend half a day getting quotes and researching policies to save an extra $50, but how much has that time cost you? A couple of hundred if it’s stopping you from doing what makes you money.
Of course you could do it much more quickly, but then you’re just comparing prices and not comparing the policies. What happens when you have a claim declined because the policy wasn’t right for your business activities? Is that worth risking your home over if you get it really wrong?
Because we’re experts in the trade industry we can find you competitive rates much more quickly, and you can have the peace of mind knowing that we’ve recommended the right policy for you.
Is it worth it for a one-personal trade business?
You might think that your trade business only needs an insurance broker once it has grown a little larger.
Afterall, why would a one-man business need an insurance broker when you can just buy a cheap policy online through one of the direct insurance companies?
Whilst we do look after trade businesses with multi-million dollar revenues, the majority of our 4,000+ clients are actually sole traders.
That’s right. Sole traders. We look after thousands of sole traders and one-person companies, and many of them have been clients for years and years.
They stick with us because they know how we can save them time and money, and they know that when things go wrong they won’t be on their own – they’ll have the Trade Risk team fighting in their corner.
So no matter how small or large your trade business is, we would say it is absolutely worth having a good insurance broker, and especially one that specialises in trade insurance.
How to get started
The best way to get started is to simply talk with us.
If you have no more than five staff and only need public liability and tool insurance, we can help you online. You can receive an instant online quote and purchase your policy fully online.
If you’d rather speak with a real person we can do that too. Simply call us on 1800 808 800 and our team will be here to help.
For larger trade businesses with more complex needs our team of insurance brokers can assist in a variety of ways. We look after most of our clients via phone and email, or if you’re local to Brisbane we can visit you or you can come to our office.
We are passionate about helping business owners with their trade insurance needs, and like most of our clients we are also a 100% family owned Australian business.
Get in touch with us to see how we can help you.
