Builder’s Insurance

Richard Roma

We’ve hired a builder to renovate our vacant house.

We currently have vacant property insurance. Our builder has confirmed that he has Public Liability insurance. Would one typically look for Employer Insurance (side note: does that cover build quality), and All Risk too?

Our builder won a tender. I don’t think the tender docs specificied Insurance, so I guess we may be stuck with the cost of those premiums.

Thanks in advance.

Metric Tensor

A non-exhaustive list

• Public Liability
• Employer's Liability (if he has employees) extended to cover subcontractors
• Product Defects Liability
• Builder's All Risk Policy

As far as I'm aware, but I could be corrected, none of these usually cover the existing structures on the site so you need to check with your own insurer what is covered when a contractor is on site and most importantly what covers you personally in the event of some sort of claim. (I have professional clients who insist they are placed as an additional insured and/or a non-vitiation clause is placed on the contractor's insurance. You may not have the financial power to demand this though!)

Also - many policies have all sorts of exclusions so the fine print is as important as the presence of insurance itself.

Calahonda52

Metric Tensor wrote: »

A non-exhaustive list

• Public Liability
• Employer's Liability (if he has employees) extended to cover subcontractors
• Product Defects Liability
• Builder's All Risk Policy

As far as I'm aware, but I could be corrected, none of these usually cover the existing structures on the site so you need to check with your own insurer what is covered when a contractor is on site and most importantly what covers you personally in the event of some sort of claim. (I have professional clients who insist they are placed as an additional insured and/or a non-vitiation clause is placed on the contractor's insurance. You may not have the financial power to demand this though!)

Also - many policies have all sorts of exclusions so the fine print is as important as the presence of insurance itself.

The other aspect to this piece by MT is the size of the deductible so him showing you the renewal invoice is not enough as premiums were reduced during the crash by increasing the deductible, sometimes as high as euro 1 mill.