What if you couldn’t work for a period due to injury or illness? Who would cover your business expenses whilst you were away?

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Hopefully you’ll have income protection insurance to help with your personal expenses such as paying the mortgage and paying for groceries, but what about your business expenses?

Regardless of whether you work alone as a sole trader or have a team of twenty tradies working for you, there will still be business bills to be paid even if you’re not there working yourself.

Business expense insurance can cover these expenses to ensure that you have a healthy business to return to once you are well enough to work yourself.

Why Do Tradies Need It?

As a self-employed tradesman there will be various fixed costs that your business incurs each month.

These costs could include the lease on your vehicle and other machinery, interest on any loans you have taken out for the business, business insurance premiums and potentially rent if you operate from your own workshop or premises.

Even if you’re unable to work for a period of time due to an injury or illness you will still have to cover all of these costs. For a few weeks this mightn’t be a problem, but what if it stretched out to a few months, or a year?

It’s important to know that when you get yourself fit and healthy and ready to return to work that you’ll also have a healthy business which hasn’t fallen into financial trouble since you’ve been away.

What Does It Cover?

A business expense policy will cover many of the fixed costs within your business.

Using the policy issued by Australian insurer Asteron as an example, they list the following items as being covered:

  • Office rent / interest expenses on a property loan
  • Vehicle or equipment leases
  • Business insurance premiums
  • Utility and other bills
  • Salaries for non-revenue generating staff
  • Cost of a replacement whilst you recover

Depending on the size of your business, these costs can add up very quickly.

If you’re business relies on your input to generate an income, it will need business expense insurance in order to survive unless it is lucky enough to have large reserves of cash lying around.

How Much Is It?

The cost of business expense insurance for a tradesman can vary greatly depending on a number of different factors.

We are unable to provide any figures in this guide, but if you’d like us to provide a quote based on your own personal situation please contact us.

Case Study

We will be uploading a great case study on a carpenter who claimed on their business expense insurance very soon, so stay tuned!

More Information

Unlike public liability and tool insurance which are classed as ‘general insurance’, business expense insurance comes under the ‘life insurance’ category.

What this means is that a general insurance broker cannot assist you with this form of insurance, and instead you will need to speak with a financial adviser.

Here at Tradesman Insurance we are one of the few specialist trade cover providers who also have access to an in-house financial adviser.

If you would like more information or a quote on this form of insurance, simply contact our office and we will be happy to point you in the right direction.