Home & Contents
Working from home changes what you must tell your insurer
Home policies are written for domestic use. Clients through the door, stock in the spare room and business equipment all sit outside that assumption.
What follows is the working version of business use of a home: the decisions in the order you actually meet them, with the reasoning attached.
Before you start
- Clerical home working is often acceptable without extra cover, but must usually be declared.
- Business stock and equipment are commonly excluded from standard contents cover.
- Public liability for visiting clients is not part of a domestic policy.
The domestic assumption
A home policy prices the risk of a household: normal occupancy, normal contents, no visitors on business. Business use changes the frequency of visitors, the value and type of contents, and the liability exposure.
Insurers therefore ask about it, and an answer given at purchase binds for the year. This is a disclosure question rather than a moral one, and the fix is usually cheap or free.
Clerical work is usually fine
Most insurers accept clerical or administrative home working by the residents without extra premium, provided it is declared. What changes the answer is visitors, stock, staff, or equipment beyond ordinary domestic value. A laptop and a desk is a different risk from a treatment room or a workshop.
For most people, the insurer decides where the line sits, which is why the question is asked rather than assumed.
Business equipment and stock
Standard contents cover typically excludes property held for business purposes, sometimes with a small allowance. That excludes tools of a trade, stock for resale, and equipment owned by an employer. The remedy is a business contents extension or a separate commercial policy, both of which are ordinary products.
In practice, discovering the exclusion after a fire is the expensive way to learn it.
Liability is the serious gap
A domestic policy usually includes public liability for personal, non-business incidents. A client injured while visiting for business purposes falls outside that, and injury claims are the largest exposures most households face. Public liability cover for a small business is generally inexpensive relative to the risk.
Anyone seeing customers at home should treat this as the first thing to check, not the last.
Employer-owned equipment
Equipment supplied by an employer usually belongs to the employer and may or may not be insured by them at your address. Neither party covering it is a common outcome, because each assumes the other has. One email to the employer resolves it, and the answer should be in writing.
The useful part is this: where it is not covered, adding it as specified contents is normally straightforward.
Some of this will suit you and some will not, and that is the point.
Tenancy and mortgage terms are separate
Leases and mortgage conditions sometimes restrict business use independently of insurance. A breach there is a contractual matter with the landlord or lender rather than the insurer, but it can still be expensive. These terms differ by country and by contract, so check your own documents.
Nothing in a general article can tell you what your specific lease permits.
The takeaway
Tell the insurer what actually happens in the house. Clerical work is usually free to declare.
Small and repeatable beats ambitious and abandoned, almost every time.
Questions readers ask
Will declaring home working raise my premium?
For clerical work, usually little or nothing. For visitors, stock or equipment, it may add a modest amount or require a separate policy, which is far cheaper than an uninsured claim.
Is my work laptop covered at home?
Often not, because it is business property and belongs to your employer. Confirm in writing who insures it rather than assuming either side has.
