Understanding Insurance

Insurance is the one of the first things you need to think about as an event supplier - regardless of what type of event supplier you are.

In addition to putting in place actions in order to prevent loss or damage to yourself and those around you, insurance is central to any strategy of liability minimisation.

By taking out insurance, you (as a service provider) pass on the financial risk of doing business to an insurance company - for a premium, of course. In return, the insurance company agrees to pay for loss specified in the insurance contract.

There are many types of insurance available, including for;

1. weather events;

2. workers compensation;

3. personal accident for volunteer workers;

4. venue, property machinery, and equipment;

5. theft and fire;

6. non-appearance of performer or event cancellation;

7. public liability;

8. force majeure;

9. directors and officers liability.

At the very least, you should ensure that you have public liability insurance and workers compensation insurance.

Here are some tips on what to think about when considering insurance:

1. Investigate your insurance needs and arrange for the right insurance policies to be obtained. This can be done with the assistance of an insurance broker;

2. Be prepared to give your insurance broker all of the information relating to your business - the type of work, the scale of work, how many people work for you, what kinds of contractual relationships you have with other suppliers and any particular obvious hazards in doing business (ie. if you are a pyrotechnics company, you would need your broker to be familiar with the impact of these hazards on insurance);

3. Be aware of when your insurance coverage commences and when it may cease - you do not want to find yourself uninsured at any given time;

4. Check out what is included and what isn’t included in your insurance contract. You may find yourself not be insured for certain aspects of what you do;

5. Keep records - make sure that you record all details of any damage or injury suffered during the course of doing business. You need to be sure that you keep these records for six (6) years, as a claimant has this period of time to commence action against you for loss, damage or injury;

6. Seek legal advice if any supplier with whom you work wish to transfer their liability over on to your insurance. This is common in larger scale event management - always read the contract that you sign with other suppliers or event organisers, so that you are not accepting liability for loss, damage or injury which is not your fault to begin with; and

7. Where suppliers want to become “named parties” or “additional insured parties”, resist this, or get legal advice about the impact this may have on the validity of your insurance;

Insurance can be tricky to navigate if you don’t understand the area - so its important to lean on as many advisers are you can. Whilst we cannot provide financial or insurance advice, we can certainly explain key concepts to you. Further, we can assist in making sure that your client contracts minimise your liability as much as possible, so as to lessen your chances of needing to use your insurance policy.

Use Event Law Templates

The good news is that Event Law’s legal templates deal with these scenarios so that you don’t have to go it alone in drafting them. These easy-to-use, affordable legal templates have been drafted by us, but can be customised by you with our help. These templates are provided to you in word format so that you can continue to use these documents for your business on an ongoing basis.

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