Home insurance and working from home
An increasing number of people are working from home due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, but does your home insurance cover you if you have to set up office at home?
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 LV= home insurance cover will not be affected. You do not need to contact us to update your documents or extend your cover.
If you're not insured with LV=, you may need to tell your insurer. If you don't tell them that you work from home and need to make a claim in the future, it may have consequences.
We've put together this simple guide to explain how working from home may affect your home insurance.
If you're an offiice based worker and need to self isolate, your home insurance with LV= will not be affected
Working from home as an employee
No commuting, no distractions, flexible working and managing your own time. There are lots of positives to working from home.
LV= already provides cover for office equipment like computers and printers. It comes as standard with our contents insurance.
If you need to see clients at home though, this may alter your home insurance cover. With additional people coming to the house, you could be seen as more of an insurance risk and your home insurance costs may increase.
Running a business from home
In parallel with the rise in people working from home as an employee, is the rise in people being self-employed. Over 4.93 million people now class themselves as self-employed and many of them run a business from home.
When your home address is also your registered business address then your home insurance company will need to know the nature of your business. They'll want to know:
- If you're just using your home for clerical work
- Whether you have regular visitors
- Whether you store goods at home and what they are
- Whether you hold any specialist tools or equipment
They may decide to extend your contents cover to include your business stock and equipment, or they could ask you to take out separate cover for these items.
Extending your insurance cover
To be fully covered for accidents that happen as a result of working from home you could consider taking out extra insurance such as extended accidental cover.
Public liability
This covers you if a visitor to your workplace is injured and makes a claim. It can also cover you if you accidently damage something that belongs to a customer.
Professional indemnity
This covers you if someone complains about the advice or service you have provided. They may sue if the advice you gave them was wrong or cost them money.
Employer's liability
If you employ anyone, on any basis, even volunteers, you need to have cover in case they injure themselves whilst they're working for you.
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