First time Insurance

The only insurance you really need to start with is:

Contents Insurance!


If your where to work in an office / public place (where public 'step into' your office) - then you would need public liability insurance.


There might be some other minor ones, but thats it.

e0c, post: 3055 a écrit : The only insurance you really need to start with is:
Contents Insurance!
If your where to work in an office / public place (where public 'step into' your office) - then you would need public liability insurance.
There might be some other minor ones, but thats it.

Doesn't public liability also cover me if i visit the clients premises and use their equipment, or is that something else? If I'm depensing SEO type advise isn't PI advised?

:eyes

You don't "need" to get any insurance, unless you employ others, and then you need compulsory employers insurance.

Remember what insurance is, and what it is not.

Insurance is not a system of government regulation. It is a contract where you agree to pay money so that when you lose all your stuff, someone else will pay you some money.

So, what is the first question to be asked?

"How much stuff do i have?", surely?

I mean, what the hell is the point in insuring your stuff IF YOU DON"T HAVE ANY STUFF???

Now, the second question is "How much stuff do i have to have before it is worth insuring?"

If you have "stuff" you cannot afford to lose(a van full of expensive tools), get insurance for it.

What about public liability?

Public liability insurance is a scam on many levels.

The law is actually a lot more human than most people think. Judges are pretty groovy folks. They are not going to take your house. They might take your second house, but by the time you are buying a second house, you will be operating as a limited liability company and so it will be safe anyway.

So..... why get insurance at all?

The only answer that makes any sense is when you need to have PLI in order to get a contract. In other words, if you don't have it, you can't get the work.

So then you have to get it, but for gods sake get the cheapest and nastiest public liability insurance you can find. get one of those online policies for a hundred quid that will never pay out when push comes to shove.

Why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T FOR YOU.

To understand why big firms demand that smaller firms get PLI, you have got to understand a legal doctrine called "the deep pockets theory".

It works like this: when shit happens on a work site and some folks get squashed or burned or otherwise TFU, SOMEBODY MUST PAY.

The court is going to make someone pay the medical bills, and the lawyers fees. Bet your fur on that. Judges love to be big heros and show the working man what nice chaps they really are. To be fair, they sometimes really are nice chaps.

But the point is, when industrial stuff goes down, the bills are huge, and the court finds fault and blame with the richest guy in the room. This is the deep pockets theory: blame the guy who can afford to pay.

This also applies to suing folks. Always sue the rich guy, OR THE GUY WITH INSURANCE.

Do you get it now? Why you should always have a shitty or non existent PLI policy?

You do not have to have it under law, and the only reason big firms want you to have it is because they know that if shit does go down and someone gets squashed, THEY WILL PAY.

Unless, of course, their lawyers can make you pay.

The only way a judge will ever make you, a freelancer, account for an industrial accident is IF YOU HAVE A BIG INSURANCE POLICY.

If you don't have one, nobody is even going to sue you. What would be the point?

Think about insurance. Think about what it is for, and whom it serves.

If you are a working man and you don't own three houses, you already pay your insurance when you pay tax on everything you buy.

Working people, freelancers and employees, pay a vast amount of money to the state, and the state tells us that it is going to make everything cool and groovy when things go wrong.

That sounds like PLI insurance to me, and so when the government lower taxes, then we can discuss donations to the public good from the purse of the working man.