Do Self-Taught Make-Up Artists need Insurance?

DISCLAIMER: We can only insure self-taught make-up artists if you’ve been practising for over a year.

It’s common for people to wonder whether they need insurance. Many people never need to make a claim so they wonder why they’re paying an insurance premium every month or year and not getting anything back in return.

Of course, it’s not as simple as that. Even though you might not be getting anything back in terms of claims payments, even if you’re not making any claims, you’re still getting peace of mind. You know that should something go wrong, you’ll be covered.

It’s also common for make-up artists to wonder whether they need makeup artist (MUA) insurance because they’ve not actually got too much to lose. However, it can be surprising just how much you have at risk.

So, what insurance do make-up artists need?

Property insurance

Obviously if you own a salon or are responsible for insuring a salon that you’re renting, you’ll need buildings insurance to cover the building. You’ll also need to insure your building’s contents against loss due to accidental damage or theft.

But even if you don’t have a salon and work as a mobile operator, the value of your business property can be more than you think. Professional make-up isn’t cheap, and your stock could be worth quite a bit. You’ll also have business equipment such as a PC to manage your business and a mobile phone to manage your bookings.

It’s important to make sure you’re fully covered so that, in the event of a loss, you can get back up and running quickly and won’t miss bookings as that would hit your ability to earn.

Liability insurance

If you employ anyone, you’re legally required to have employer’s liability insurance. This covers you if an employee makes a compensation claim against you.

Even if you don’t employ anyone you should have public liability insurance. This covers you if a third party makes a compensation claim against you because they allege that something you have done or failed to do has resulted in an injury to them or damage to their property.

Public liability insurance should come with products liability insurance. You need this because it covers compensation claims made against you due to defects in any products that you have sold or supplied.

Compensation claims can be expensive. Five-figure compensation awards are common and six-figure compensation awards aren’t rare, particularly as any of the claimant’s loss of earnings and other expenses will be included in any award.

Liability insurance is also important because your liability insurer will defend any compensation claim made against you on your behalf. Compensation claims often involve complicated legal arguments, so having a specialist team working for you if you find yourself in this situation is essential.

Self-taught make-up artist’s public liability insurance

Public liability insurance is basically the backbone of your make-up artist’s insurance policy. To go into further depth, it covers claims for situations such as spilling hair dye on your client’s designer handbag or your client tripping over your equipment bag that was left in the hallway and injuring themselves. While, on the face of it, claims like these don’t seem too bad, the costs of the compensation when coupled with the costs of the legal fees associated with fighting them can quickly turn into vast sums of money, which can mean the death of your business if you don’t have the relevant funds or insurance to cover it. It’s far better to have a specialised insurance policy designed for self-taught make-up artists, in order to ensure that, should the worst happen, you have adequate cover to protect yourself.

However, public liability insurance isn’t the only insurance you really need to consider when taking out your insurance policy. Because public liability insurance excludes claims arising from professional activities, this means that a lot of the work a self-taught make-up artist might take on might not be covered by their public liability insurance. And that’s where our next insurance cover comes in.

Treatment risk cover

As stated above, standard public liability insurance policies don’t cover compensation claims arising out of professional activities. This means that there is a chance that someone in the make-up profession could find they are uninsured in the event of a compensation claim being made against them if they relied on a standard public liability insurance policy rather than making sure that they relied on a policy that was aimed at their profession.

A make-up artist public liability policy should include a treatment risk cover extension which addresses this potential gap in cover.

Financial loss cover

Standard public and products liability policies only cover compensation claims that involve injuries or property damage. Compensation claims for purely economic losses are not covered.

You should make sure that your public liability insurance policy includes a financial loss cover extension to cover you if such a compensation claim is made against you.

Other types of insurance

There are a number of other types of insurance that you should consider. These include:

• Legal expenses insurance, which covers your legal costs if you find yourself involved in legal action
• Personal accident and sickness insurance, which replaces your income if you’re unable to work because you’re ill or have been injured