Cheap public liability insurance for my web (yes, web) business

November 1, 2009 5:48 PM

I'm after really cheap public liability insurance for my new business. I need public liability purely for bureaucratic reasons, so I'm after the cheapest, nastiest policy I can find. Can anyone recommend a company?

I'm setting up a web application and was recently successful in obtaining funding for next year as part of the Australian Government's NEIS program. As part of the NEIS program requirements, I must, unfortunately, have public liability insurance before I commence the program, despite public liability insurance being redundant for my purposes.

I called up a few insurance agencies and the cheapest I could find was $480 per year through RACV (insured for $5 million). $480 per year seems pretty excessive, since I'm going to be working from home and never actually going to see any of my customers!

Does anyone know if it's possible to get real cheap public liability insurance (I live in Melbourne)? I don't care if it's dodgy...no customer is actually going to come up to my apartment in person! I just need something cheap and nasty. So long as I have a policy number and proof of payment, NEIS are happy with that.

posted by tomargue to law & government (4 comments total)

Cheapest I could find for 12 months was about $200 from AAMI, which will give you $10M public liability, $10K property in care, and $10M pollution (?!). You can get it online via their website and it will take you about 10 minutes.
posted by ninazer0 at 6:09 PM on November 1

Cool stuff, ninazer0. I have actually given AAMI a call, but they said they were unable to insure my "business type", which I told them was a "web business". Maybe I didn't put the right spin on it...

Did you actually get the entire policy (paid for and everything) purely via the AAMI website? Or did you have to speak to a representative (checking it out AAMI website now).

What kind of business are you, out of interest?
posted by tomargue at 6:23 PM on November 1

I did everything purely online. I am an internet based business but the insurance I wanted was for a market stall, so sorry - I should have noted that originally. My bad.

I've found out through the two years I've been working that as soon as you say "internet based", eyes glaze over. Now I simply say "retailer" instead of "web-shop". Depending on what you do, you may need to just say "designer" or "consultant" if you can and simplify it.
posted by ninazer0 at 7:57 PM on November 1

I was just about to log into mefi and ask this exact question so thanks Tomarque :)

I'm in the same boat - a web designer by trade and am applying for GITC5 accreditation so I needed $5 million worth of public liability.

I've organised mine through AAMI because I've had my car insurance with them for years and always found them to be really good and easy to deal with.

Cost me $385 in total for one year which also included 50K worth of business equipment insurance in case of fire.

It does suck because it's really not necessary when you're a consultant who works from home, but you can always just build it back into your fees if they're going to make you have it.
posted by katala at 8:00 PM on November 3