Purchasing insurance can be a minefield if you haven’t had to purchase it for your trade before. Whether you are an electrician or plumber, builder or carpenter, if you are working for yourself in a trade, you need to have the right insurance to ensure that both you and your customers are covered when you are working for them.

If you are a sole trader, you will be a self-employed individual that is running a business with a sole trader’s legal structure. This means you handle all earnings and losses, but it also means that you are responsible for insuring yourself and your business.

Why Do You Need Insurance?

In an industry that’s littered with potential lawsuits, you need to protect yourself and your customers. To do that, you need insurance. When you are purchasing insurance for your trade, you need to ensure that you are buying the right policies. The world is not without risk, and as someone working for themselves, you are responsible when disaster strikes.

Insurance helps to protect you against a range of issues that can pop up at any point. There are hundreds of reasons that you need to have insurance, such as anything from a damaging natural disaster to business theft. You need to be covered so that you don’t lose out if you were to be sued. You could lose profits if legal liabilities are unfulfilled, especially for a business dealing with expensive equipment and items.

Without insurance, you could lose out on clients, too. Most clients require a sole trader to have insurance to cover both themselves and the business itself. There are even some contractual obligations stating that sole traders must be insured before business deals begin.

If you’re renting a business facility, insurance is something you should get even if your landlord has insurance for the premises. Your contents insurance will be your responsibility.

Having the right insurance can make a difference between you being a success, and your business losing everything because of an injury, act of God, or a lawsuit brought about by an unhappy customer.

What Insurance Do I Need?

As a sole trader, you will need a range of insurance policies to cover you from many risks. These include:

Professional Indemnity Insurance

This is the type of business insurance that will protect you against any third party claims. If there is a breach of professional duty or you do not fulfill your responsibilities that are covered by the contract you have or the work you’ve agreed to do, you could face action. When you have professional indemnity insurance in place, you will be able to better defend your business and prevent financial losses where possible.

Public Liability Insurance

You might not think you need this, but given that your work is in a trade, what you do can directly affect the public or your client. Using this, you can protect your business against claims for injury, damage, and other issues that are caused by your job or your business.

You don’t have to be in a fixed office to need public liability insurance, because if an accident happens, and an injury occurs relating to your workplace, you could be accountable for it.

Accident & Illness Cover

As a sole trader, you have the awful downside of don’t work, don’t earn. If you don’t work for a day, you will lose the money for it. With the right accident and illness coverage, you can avoid losing out just because you need to take sick days. With the pandemic, this is even more important than it ever has been and you deserve coverage. You should check with your insurance provider whether they offer this level of insurance and if so, you won’t have to lose your income because of an accident or illness.

Equipment & Tools Cover

As a tradesperson, you’ll be using a vehicle to get around, along with specific tools to ensure that a job is done quickly and correctly. You must protect these assets because without them, you won’t have a job. Your equipment is just as much at risk of theft and damage as any other business, and when you are on the road and traveling between jobs, you need to know that you have everything covered as much as possible.

You also want to ensure that your equipment and tools are under coverage too, because you need to know that you can come back from burglary. Insurance will then pay out if you have your tools stolen, and it also protects against things like fire damage, violent entry to your vehicle, vehicle collision and more.

Choosing The Right Provider

Choosing the right insurance provider is vital if you want to make sure that you are fully covered for the right price. Insurance may be an extra business cost to factor in, but without it, something damaging could leave you even further out of pocket. You’re going to want to avoid this if you can.

Your business is best protected when you have insurance, and you now know some of the insurance types that you need. Choosing the right provider involves shopping around and comparing policies. You should do your due diligence with an insurance broker so that you can get the best deal when purchasing insurance for your trade.