Insurance for working at home artist

inspector_lashford

Hi, first post on here. My wife is an artist and has been actively practising from home for the last couple of years (though the actual income she makes is small). Her work involves painting on canvas, and a little bit of teaching small groups of children (groups of 6, couple of times a week), from a glorified shed/studio at the bottom of the garden. She is a member of some artist collective and gets public liability with that (in case a student should trip in the garden and sue us etc.). When she started I spoke to our home insurer (typical premium approx. £200/year) and they said they couldn't cover us. So we had to start talking to more specialist people and this then resulted in quite large jumps in premium. In the end went with a local broker at about £500/year. This seemed to be due to the added risk of producing the art (which we have been told is "manufacturing", though blatantly painting onto canvas is not risky in the same way welding metal might be) and the teaching. The Covid has meant the teaching has bitten the dust, so on contacting the broker, it seems that this hasn't really changed the premium much, still at about £500. The whole thing is so nontransparent. Our main worry is our house. Basically, we don't want the house to burn down and a standard insurer to decline to pay out because we didn't mention that my wife paints in a shed at the bottom of the garden. So I am wondering if reverting to a standard policy would be much of a risk here? If anything happened to the studio it would be bad but not life changing like not having the house properly covered would be. We have asked on an artist forum at the time (and lots of artists work from home) but they all started talking about public liability (not quite getting the question) or seemed to be burying their head in the sand about the issue. The whole thing seems like a bit of a racket, I was wondering if anyone had any advice? Many thanks.

Sandtree

In recent years home insurance has covered "clerical" business use at home as standard but when I was trawling the internet for our own renewal this year I noted that a few places were also including crafts and so as long as the teaching has stopped then there are policies out there (as long as she doesnt mind her "art" being described as "craft" - I know these are contentious terms in those circles). Unfortunately I didnt note names as it isn't relevant for us as the Mrs has her own studio but just peaked interest.

Teaching is going to be a totally different thing, firstly you will probably get an endorsement such that theft claims must have evidence of violent entry because of inviting strangers into your property and secondly there is a residual public liability risk if for some reason the other PL policy doesn't respond to an incident.

noitsnotme

£500 seems a lot.  Try somewhere like Policybee to see if it can be obtained any cheaper.  You can enter the type of business and I just tried ‘artist’ which it does have in its list - https://www.policybee.co.uk/occupations.html

inspector_lashford

Sandtree said:

In recent years home insurance has covered "clerical" business use at home as standard but when I was trawling the internet for our own renewal this year I noted that a few places were also including crafts and so as long as the teaching has stopped then there are policies out there (as long as she doesnt mind her "art" being described as "craft" - I know these are contentious terms in those circles). Unfortunately I didnt note names as it isn't relevant for us as the Mrs has her own studio but just peaked interest.

Teaching is going to be a totally different thing, firstly you will probably get an endorsement such that theft claims must have evidence of violent entry because of inviting strangers into your property and secondly there is a residual public liability risk if for some reason the other PL policy doesn't respond to an incident.

Thanks Sandtree - no qualms about using "craft" in an insurance context, but I recall we hit our head repeatedly against the wall trying to get our circumstances to work in a generic policy. I accept there might be more risks on teaching (though in our case  it is close circles and only the kids not adults go through the house), though my main worry is the house burning down due to some other reason and not being covered. If we got burgled again though annoying would not be life changing for us and in any case I would still make a claim and hope it got through, the issue is that we can't afford to take that chance with the house burning down. It does seem that the world isn't really geared up for this sort of situation, which you would think might get more common post-Covid

inspector_lashford

noitsnotme said:

£500 seems a lot.  Try somewhere like Policybee to see if it can be obtained any cheaper.  You can enter the type of business and I just tried ‘artist’ which it does have in its list - link here

Thanks noitsnotme. I looked there and I couldn't get any prices after answering a few simple questions it wanted contact details, and looking at the site it doesn't seem like a home insurance site, more one aimed specifically at businesses. Our situation is that we want home insurance, given there happens to be a small amount of business going on. Teaching aside (which isn't happening now anyway), if the art she was doing in the studio was a pastime rather than for sale this would not be an issue, which seems crazy.

davidmcn

inspector_lashford said:

Sandtree said:

In recent years home insurance has covered "clerical" business use at home as standard but when I was trawling the internet for our own renewal this year I noted that a few places were also including crafts and so as long as the teaching has stopped then there are policies out there (as long as she doesnt mind her "art" being described as "craft" - I know these are contentious terms in those circles). Unfortunately I didnt note names as it isn't relevant for us as the Mrs has her own studio but just peaked interest.

Teaching is going to be a totally different thing, firstly you will probably get an endorsement such that theft claims must have evidence of violent entry because of inviting strangers into your property and secondly there is a residual public liability risk if for some reason the other PL policy doesn't respond to an incident.

my main worry is the house burning down due to some other reason and not being covered. 

Pretty sure that insurers can't refuse a claim because of something like that if the cause was completely irrelevant to the risk being claimed under. Obviously may be different if it were say work-related equipment catching fire and spreading.

noitsnotme

inspector_lashford said:

noitsnotme said:

£500 seems a lot.  Try somewhere like Policybee to see if it can be obtained any cheaper.  You can enter the type of business and I just tried ‘artist’ which it does have in its list - link here

Thanks noitsnotme. I looked there and I couldn't get any prices after answering a few simple questions it wanted contact details, and looking at the site it doesn't seem like a home insurance site, more one aimed specifically at businesses. Our situation is that we want home insurance, given there happens to be a small amount of business going on. Teaching aside (which isn't happening now anyway), if the art she was doing in the studio was a pastime rather than for sale this would not be an issue, which seems crazy.

Sorry I misunderstood.  I thought you were looking for cheaper business insurance.  Policybee is a business insurance provider.

inspector_lashford

davidmcn said:

inspector_lashford said:

Sandtree said:

In recent years home insurance has covered "clerical" business use at home as standard but when I was trawling the internet for our own renewal this year I noted that a few places were also including crafts and so as long as the teaching has stopped then there are policies out there (as long as she doesnt mind her "art" being described as "craft" - I know these are contentious terms in those circles). Unfortunately I didnt note names as it isn't relevant for us as the Mrs has her own studio but just peaked interest.

Teaching is going to be a totally different thing, firstly you will probably get an endorsement such that theft claims must have evidence of violent entry because of inviting strangers into your property and secondly there is a residual public liability risk if for some reason the other PL policy doesn't respond to an incident.

my main worry is the house burning down due to some other reason and not being covered. 

Pretty sure that insurers can't refuse a claim because of something like that if the cause was completely irrelevant to the risk being claimed under. Obviously may be different if it were say work-related equipment catching fire and spreading.

thanks David - that is exactly the sort of reassurance I am after....does anyone know where this might be stated authoritatively? Would it be in policy documentation, or is it covered by some regulation? My worry is that an insurance company in the event of a worst case scenario (basically, what we get insurance for) would be seeking ways to avoid liability.

inspector_lashford

I've just had a not massively helpful chat with MAS who reckon it might simply be down to the terms on individual policies, and they then referred me on to the financial ombudsman who I have emailed so will see if there is anything useful that comes out of that.

Sandtree

davidmcn said:
Pretty sure that insurers can't refuse a claim because of something like that if the cause was completely irrelevant to the risk being claimed under. Obviously may be different if it were say work-related equipment catching fire and spreading.

I personally wouldn't want to be risking it... 

Non disclosure depends on a number of things, firstly was the non-disclosure accidental, due to poor questions, negligent, intentional/fraudulent, secondly there can be consideration given to if the policy/terms would have been offered had the correct answer been given and finally there is a consideration as to if the non-disclosure is relevant to the claim. 

Where the customer has willfully or negligently not declared information to a clear question and if the insurer would not have offered a policy had the truth been declared it is generally accepted that the insurer can void the policy. Given the difficulty the OP has had with even getting prices offered it would be fairly high risk to "forget" to declare the business activity.

Even lesser offences can get you into trouble... https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/case-studies/insurer-voided-home-insurance-policy-refused-claim-fire-damage  this case the policyholder failed to inform their insurers of a claim and the FOS deemed that this was a willful act and agreed the policy could be voided and claim avoided as a consequence.

BooJewels

I can't answer your specific question, but I've always erred on the side of total disclosure with insurance matters - a potential small saving in premium might prove to be an expensive mistake in the event of a claim, where you don't get this right - as you're already contemplating. 

I make and sell jewellery and work from home.  I have a domestic [contents and buildings] policy as a 'home worker' for the home (that covers computers and office equipment) and a separate business policy for stock, equipment, tools, materials, indemnity, cash and stock in transit to events etc.  Each policy is aware of the other and it was the household company that suggested how I insure the business, once I changed direction a few years ago.

I use Insurance Choice (I started with a smaller company they took over) for my business and as they do a number of specialist policies, for homes and businesses, may be able to offer advice on your scenario.