Self Employed Beauty therapist | What Insurance do you need?

Anyone who is self-employed needs to protect themselves and their business via business insurance, and mobile beauty therapists are no different. However, due to the unique nature of their profession, beauticians face unique risks.

What risks do self-employed beauty therapists face?

Many of the risks that beauticians face are no different to the risks that everyone else faces. These include:

Accidental damage to your property
Loss of your property due to theft
Damage to your vehicle
Theft of your vehicle
Being responsible for an injury to a third party
Being responsible for an injury to a third party, resulting from a treatment carried out
Being responsible for a third party’s property being damaged
Being responsible for a third party suffering an economic loss.

There are also some risks that are specific to people who are running businesses, including:

Causing an injury to an employee
Losing income because you are unable to work through an injury or illness
Incurring legal expenses through employment tribunals or legal disputes with customers.

How can self employed beauty therapists insure against such risks?

Since self-employed beauty theraphy work is such a specialist field, you really need a specialist beautician insurance policy in order to completely cover you for everything and anything that could go wrong.

Accidental damage to your business property or loss of that property due to theft can usually be insured as easily as it is to insure your home and its contents, for instance. This comes under business contents insurance and every good beautician’s insurance policy should include this as an optional cover. Similarly, motor insurance for a business is usually easy to obtain, protecting you in case you have an accident or your vehicle is damaged or stolen.

Compensation claims made against you by employees are covered by employer’s liability insurance and this is a legal requirement if you have any employees. There are heavy penalties if you employ anyone and don’t have employer’s liability insurance.

Compensation claims made against you by members of the public for injury or damage to their property are covered by public liability insurance. This type of insurance usually includes products liability insurance, which covers compensation claims which arise from products that you have sold or supplied.

Some insurance packages only cover compensation claims arising from injuries or property damage, though, so it is important to check that your cover has a financial loss extension to protect you if a compensation claim for a purely economic loss is made against you.

Insuring against losing your income because you’ve been injured or are suffering from an illness is also something that you can add to most beautician insurance policies via personal accident insurance. This pays a weekly amount while you are off work, depending on the level of cover you select. When you’re self-employed you do not get sick pay, so knowing your bills will still be paid while you cannot work is one less thing to worry about while you recover.

What else do you need on a beautician’s insurance policy?

Beauticians also face risks from the beauty treatments that they provide. Sometimes treatments can cause reactions or injuries. Those treatments can also cause economic losses. This could be the case if your client was a model and your treatment caused an allergic reaction, as they wouldn’t be able to work until it cleared up.

This sort of risk is not covered by standard business insurance policies because it is deemed to arise from the delivery of professional services. Any good specialist beautician insurance policy should include treatment risk cover which means that this sort of situation is covered. It can also cover compensation claims arising from the advice that a beautician has given.