What is Motor Trade Insurance?

Motor Trade Insurance covers Motor Traders that come in all shapes and sizes from someone selling cars or offering mechanical repairs part time from home to second hand dealerships right up to main dealers. Motor Trade Insurance can be split into a number of categories including Road Risk, Public and Employers Liability, Stock of Own and Customer Vehicles, Service Indemnity and Professional Indemnity for dealerships offering finance.

Buildings & Tenants Improvements

If you own the premises you trade from then you will need to include cover for buildings and fixtures & fittings. This will cover the physical building including fixtures and fittings in the event of a loss such as a fire or flood. If you lease the premises you may want to consider insuring the physical changes you have made to the premises such as carpets or flooring and individual offices or meeting rooms built at the premises.

Contents & Equipment

Whether you are a sole trader with no employees or you have 50 staff working from your premises you will need to cover contents such as furniture computers, furniture, tools and equipment such as ramps etc. The cost of fitting out your garage and replacing tools, equipment, ramps etc. can be high so covering Contents & Equipment in the event of total loss is important under your Motor Trade Policy.

Stock Insurance

Obviously those involved in sales will need to have their stock of vehicles covered by their Motor Trade Policy however, for those in the associated areas of mechanical servicing & repairs, crash repairs and valeting etc. you should have cover for stock of vehicles as well. Customer cars in your garage need to be covered in the event of theft or even fire so it is vital to have stock correctly insured.

Public & Products Liability Insurance

We’ve covered Public Liability as a separate topic (which can be found here sound.ie) but we’ll briefly cover it again. Public Liability Insurance provides cover in the event that you cause bodily injury, death or damage to property of any third party at your office or in the course of your business. This could be as a result of someone coming to your office for a meeting and tripping over a trailing cable on the ground.

Service Indemnity

Service Indemnity or Defective Workmanship is particularly important for those in the service and repair side the trade. If you repair or service a vehicle and the work is defective and causes an accident you could be held responsible. Service Indemnity can protect you in the event of such a claim.

Employers Liability Insurance

Just as you have an onus of responsibility to members of the public, you also have a duty to keep your staff safe. Employers Liability covers you in the event that one of your employees suffers a loss during the course of their work. As above, an example of this could be an employee tripping in the office and injuring themselves.

Motor Trade Road Risks

Last but by no means least, we will look at the Motor Trade Road Risks policy. Like all other motor policies cover options include Comprehensive, Third Party Fire & Theft and Third Party Only. The Motor Trade Road Risks policy covers policyholders and named drivers (for Ltd companies) to drive their own vehicles. These would be vehicles owned by the company or directors of the company only and will not cover employees or family member vehicles. The policy will also cover drivers to drive customer vehicles. Some cover restrictions will may apply depending on vehicle value, size or classification.

Additional Covers to Consider

In the course of your professional duties you may want to consider other policies such as Professional Indemnity, Directors & Officers cover and Cyber Liability. You can learn more about these covers at sound.ie and we will be covering these policies as individual topics in the near future.

The Team at Sound Insurance are specialists in Motor Trade Insurance. Call us today on 01 524 2800 or visit sound.ie to find out more.