What is Artisan Insurance? We give you the 411

The Low Down on the Question: “What Is Artisans Insurance?”

If you’re a carpenter, plumber, electrician, mechanic, mason, or any other sort of skilled artisan contractor, you probably qualify for artisan’s insurance.

You may have heard of this type of insurance before as it’s sometimes referred to as contractor’s insurance. So if you’re an artisan or contractor asking yourself, “what is artisan’s insurance,” know that it is very similar to contractor’s insurance.

So why call it something different? Because artisan’s insurance is a different product than contractor’s insurance and it’s sold through different insurance companies in different states. Understandably, this can be confusing to a contractor who just wants to make sure they are properly insured.

What Is Artisan’s Insurance and Why You Need It… 

The thing to remember about artisan’s insurance is that it is strictly liability insurance. Artisan’s insurance does NOT cover things like your business office, your supplies, or your work vehicles. Artisan’s insurance is liability insurance and only liability insurance, it covers what are essentially mistakes made by you or damages done because of craftsmanship errors. If you’re a contractor that specializes in a certain area, you probably already know how important it is to fully insure and protect your business.

Unfortunately, mistakes happen each and every day for businesses. But if you’re a contractor that deals in repairing, creating, or installing things in homes or businesses and something goes wrong…it could very easily be the end of your business and your livelihood if you’re not properly covered.

Again, the reason that you’ll want artisan’s insurance is for the liability aspect only. To cover your business office, supplies, work vehicles, and other things you will need to purchase a separate insurance plan.

If you work in someone’s home, or work on a business’s property, there’s a certain amount of inherent risk involved. When people get hurt because of your craftsmanship, they’ll have to be compensated financially somehow. This means that they’ll come after you to pay for their medical expenses and/or damages.

If you are part of a group of different skilled artisans working on the same building or same large project and one of the other artisans makes a mistake that results in damage or injury guess what, all the artisans in the building could be held liable, not just the one who made the actual mistake. So artisan’s insurance doesn’t just protect you from your own mistakes, it protects you from the mistakes that other artisans can render you liable for as well.

If you’re an artisan contractor the brutal fact is it only takes one mistake, one incident to ruin you financially and no one deserves that. Make sure you’re properly covered for that liability so one mistake doesn’t spell the end.

Now That We Know the Answer to What Artisan’s Insurance Is…Let’s Take a Look at a Recent Event… 

Recently in Valley Cottage, NY, homeowner Michael Racinelli called a local tree removal company to remove a tree that was dangerously close to falling on his home. The tree removal company needed to use a crane to do the job.

Unfortunately, the end result was that instead of the tree falling through Mr. Racinelli’s home, the crane collapsed and fell through instead.

Luckily for the owner of the tree removal company they had sufficient insurance that covered the damage to the home (the crane basically went straight through the, nearly slicing the master bedroom in half).

Now this is what happens when you’re correctly insured. Imagine, however, if the contractor hadn’t been fully insured. It could have meant total and complete financial ruin for his business as well as his family. As an artisan contractor you put yourself into that type of danger every single day.

So now you understand why liability insurance is important to you as an artisan contractor. The event described up above may seem like a fluke however, these are the things that happen more often than not.

When Asking “What Is Artisan’s Insurance” Think Liability… 

Another case where you’d want to have artisan’s insurance is when someone gets hurt in an area that you’re working in. Roofers have to worry about this every day. Any time roofers are working on a home, there’s always the chance that something could fall off the roof and hit a passerby. Another good example is when a builder is working on a home, they often have their equipment connected to an electrical generator in their work truck. This means that cords can be run along the sidewalk. While you may (hopefully) take every precaution to warn pedestrians and passersby about the danger, there’s always the chance that they may not see your warning, trip over one of your wires, fall, hurt themselves, and hold you liable.

Silly little oversights like this happen every single day, and that’s why you want to make sure to cover yourself with artisan’s insurance. Every contracting business has its pitfalls. Every day is another chance for something unfortunate to happen. It’s important that you’re prepared for anything to happen. Artisan’s insurance will leave you prepared and could even some day save your business from being completely wiped out financially.

Works Cited:

The Low Down on the Question: “What Is Artisans Insurance?”. (2013, March 14). Retrieved January 05, 2017, from https://www.hanoverfire.com/What-Is-Artisans-Insurance.html