DOES YOUR CUSTOMER'S INSURANCE COVER THEM FROM WORKING FROM HOME?

One of the consequences of COVID has been the number of employees having to work from home. 

The Government have said they want people to stop working from home and return to the office and have asked employers to encourage their employees to do so. All well and good in theory but a sizeable majority may be unwilling or even unable to do this as employer's do not have any plans to return all staff to the office full-time in the near future.

An ABI statement as lockdown commenced stated that ‘if you are an office based worker and need to work from home because of government advice or because you need to self-isolate, your home insurance cover will not be affected.’

However, while the assumption is that the work being done at home is essentially clerical, it might not be. Home workers who are visited at home by customers for example, would be advised to contact their insurers to be sure.

Also, let’s not forget that the number of self-employed had risen from 3.2 million in 2000 to more than 5 million by the end of 2019.

When was the last time you checked on whether your more established customers might have made the step to becoming self-employed or be considering such a move?

If you already have other customers covered by a policy through Assurant Intermediary the good news is that they (and you) can relax, as they are already covered at least for clerical home working either temporarily or full time.

For any new customers who take out an Assurant home insurance policy, you will need to state individual working details but you and they can be assured of cover, whether they are employed or self-employed, if they do clerically work from home. 

At this time, we are still only talking about temporary measures due to the consequences of COVID with the government rightly showing real concerns about the ramifications to the economy if we do continue to work from home longer term. But perhaps working from home permanently will become more the norm when individuals or companies are looking at their time and costs? We shall see...  

Assurant would love to work with you to help your clients, get in touch and see if we can.

03332 000 444
advisers@assurant.com