No reduction in business insurance cost

Tim_B_2

I take out public liability insurance and employer's liability insurance each year. Over the past year my business has only been able to trade for 3 months out of 12. I asked my insurance company if they're able to pause or refund part of the payment but they said no. Now it's time to renew and I won't be able to start up my business again probably until the summer, and the insurance company are saying that they still can't reduce the price at all. Have any of you other small businesses managed to reduce your insurance costs? What do you recommend I do?

Sandtree

EL is based on salaries so are you still paying your employees the same amounts? 
I imagine your PL is actually Public and Product Liability and its normally rated on turnover so again have you got the right numbers?

Both of the above are typically done in bands so if you are already in the lowest band then reducing it wont help.

Tim_B_2

I see, I wasn't aware of how these are calculated.

I have one employee (me) and have contractors whose fee will be approximately the same.

I entered the turnover at a similar amount as the amount I put for the previous year, just around 10% less. I figure that as soon as I can trade again I'll try to make up some of the downtime due to lockdown.

Sandtree

What is your operating model? Sole trader? Ltd?

A sole trader with no employees has no benefit have EL for themselves as you cannot sue yourself and a Ltd doesnt need EL if it has a single director with 50% or more shareholding with no other employees (but it can choose to buy it).

For contractors it depends if they are legally considered employees or bona-fide independents... if they are "labour only" and you are providing direction, tools etc then they may be considered employees in which case you must have EL covering them but if they are genuinely independent sub-contractors then there is no need for you to have EL for them.  

Obviously clients can create a contractual requirement for EL even if there isnt a legal requirement.

Tim_B_2

It's a limited company. I guess I'd rather have the EL insurance in case there is any question about whether contractors were deemed to be employees.