Possibly daft question about working from home and insurance

[Yummypalmtree]

I’m working from home at the moment like many others and my home insurance is almost due for renewal.

One of the questions I have been given is whether I use my home for business purposes? Well, it’s not my own business but I do have a lot of computer equity set up so I can do my job from home. I dismissed it but DH point out that as home insurance companies are notorious for squirming out of paying up in the event of a claim how would we stand if one of the works PC’s or monitors caught fire or fell and damaged something - would we be Covered?

Computer EQUIPMENT that is, not equity!

Hmmm I'm not sure. I also work from home occassionally and of course all the time at the moment. The work provides me with all the equipment and they have insurance. Did you buy your stuff yourself or is it possibly already covered?

Not a daft question - it’s something that most people would not have thought about if working from home is new and thrust upon them.

The equipment belongs to the company but we’ve all brought it home out of the office to keep the business running. PC, two large monitors all plugged into my router and electric- that’s another thing! How much will this be costing in extra electricity!

I called to ask our insurance company about this a couple of years ago when DH was made redundant and took a 12 month contract working from home. They made a note of it and sent out amended documents, but as customers weren't coming to the house and no stock was being stored on the premises, it didn't affect the premium.

I believe with LV you’re covered to wfh so long as the company isn’t registered to your address, and you don’t have business visitors to the address.

Might be best checking with your work as it may already be insured. Some people in my work raised concerns about higher electricity bills but were basically told they are saving money on travel so it balances out. Never mind I can walk to work so not true for me lol

I am home based but since the lockdown have been working full time from home (I usually leave home every day, but dont have an office).

When i do my home insurance on the comparison sites, for the last couple of years there has been a question asking if I do any work or run a business from. I choose the basic admin/clerical option as i dont have people visiting my home for my work, which would increase the premium. I think its more of a standard question now as lots of people run businesses from home.

I dont run my own business but work for a company that provides all the equipment.

Shop around (because you always should )
On at least one of the sites (compare the market iirc) it has a specific option for if you are doing “clerical” work from home, ie no client visits or manufacturing etc. I found it very helpfully explicit.

You then need to check the ts and cs of whichever insurer you go for, admittedly, but at least you’ve got a range. Insurers as a whole seem much more set up for this than they used to be, DH and I were relatively early adopters of working from home, and the job of making sure the home ins covers it has got much easier the last couple of years.

One thing you might want to do is make sure that your company is still insuring the equipment. So (as I understand it as a customer), you are covering your own home and belongings, which includes any damage somehow caused by working from home, but your company is covering any loss of company equipment, company data, etc. Again, I’ve found this has got a lot more explicit in a lot more insurance policies over few years.

HTH.

Lloyds Bank told us that so long as we confined work activities to "paperwork", the only equipment was a PC, laptop or similar and there were no clients calling on the premises then our normal household cover remained valid and would cover us even if the claim was "work" related.

Martin Lewis website has something about reclaiming electricity from hmrc.