selling in the home

littlestars

i've scoured about 10 pages now and nothing jumps out at me, so here it goes.

a friend of mine has an established internet business which has just moved to bigger warehouse premises and the intention has been for at least 6 months now to branch out and extend to selling in peoples homes via commission paid (not employed) consultants.

they would sell a ki of the products they sell in return the consultant gets a % of commission back from sales achieved. a similar business plan to jme at home and vie at home (just different products/industry)

now both JME and VIE subscribe their consultants to their indemnity insurance policies but my friend has looked into it and is struggling to get insurance companies to insure reps that aren't officially employed by them.

my questions are
A) is a policy needed to sell good in peoples homes where they have requested your attendance (booked in advance etc not cold calling or door to door)

B)does anyone know the name of the company who provides/underwrites the policy for JME or VIE so we can investigate it further.

Cheers

Horace

They would need public liability insurance and I think professional indemnity insurance - I am assuming that the consultants would be self employed much the same as those that sell Jamie at Home or Vie en Vie? Hiscox do public liability and professional indemnity and I should imagine quite a few commercial insurance brokers will be able offer something similar.

jexygirl

*disclaimer - I have never done party plan, so have no idea whether these links are any good!*

We use http://www.alanboswell.com/ as our insurers, and as it turns out, so does our landlord when we recently needed to claim!
No idea if they would be able to help, or indeed, if they do what you need, however, they are or seem to be really helpful, and so far, for us, very competitive, we have PL, contents and everything through them. If they don't do it, they may know someone who does.

A quick google - haven't looked into them or read up - this seems to give references to potential insurers, tho perhaps related to a particular industry???
http://www.stardustkids.co.uk/acatalog/Party_Agent_Insurance.html



Make sure the package to the planner, the host and to the buisness is lucrative and effective - thats where the sums come in big time!

Congratulations on your friends expansion, hope all goes well and it continues to do so and best of luck with the party plan side
Jex

Pennywise

When it comes to insurance, it depends whether you're an employee or self employed - there's no middle ground.

A firm's insurance policy will usually cover its employees.

Self employed usually have to arrange their own insurance.

I think your "reps" will have to make their own insurance arrangements or take the risk themselves. It would probably be wise to have it written into the agreement between the firm and its reps that the reps are self employed and therefore responsible for their own insurance and attend their customer's homes at their own risk etc.

Dangermac

Pennywise wrote: »

When it comes to insurance, it depends whether you're an employee or self employed - there's no middle ground.

A firm's insurance policy will usually cover its employees.

Self employed usually have to arrange their own insurance.

I think your "reps" will have to make their own insurance arrangements or take the risk themselves. It would probably be wise to have it written into the agreement between the firm and its reps that the reps are self employed and therefore responsible for their own insurance and attend their customer's homes at their own risk etc.

Ignore this advice. It is well-intentioned, but inaccurate.

Companies normally ought to carry Public & Employers Liability Insurance for self-employed persons.

The fact that some-one is self-employed doesnt mean that a court wont deem them to be an employee in the event of an injury.

It is worth chatting this through with a broker. It isnt especially complex, but you need to speak to a broker that knows what they are doing.

Note - any broker who says that Employers Liability Insurance isnt required for self-employed persons should be treated with caution (ask them to look up the definition of 'employee' in any policy wording.

Hope this helps

DM

littlestars

Thanks everyone for your help i'll forward this info to my friend and hopefully we'll be able to make some progress to getting up and running!

dacouch

Dangermac wrote: »

Ignore this advice. It is well-intentioned, but inaccurate.

Companies normally ought to carry Public & Employers Liability Insurance for self-employed persons.

The fact that some-one is self-employed doesnt mean that a court wont deem them to be an employee in the event of an injury.

It is worth chatting this through with a broker. It isnt especially complex, but you need to speak to a broker that knows what they are doing.

Note - any broker who says that Employers Liability Insurance isnt required for self-employed persons should be treated with caution (ask them to look up the definition of 'employee' in any policy wording.

Hope this helps

DM

To add to Dangermac's post, the middle ground between employee and self employed is normally called "Labour Only Subcontractor" by the Insurance Industry.

Have a word with a commercial broker avoid Swintons and the chain high street brokers as their knowledge is very limited.