You have a clean licence, years of no claims, and a van you have never put a scratch on. You enter your occupation and the quotes disappear.
For a number of trades this is routine, and it has very little to do with how you drive.
Why occupation affects a motor quote
Insurers price on the whole risk, not just the driver. Your trade tells them what is typically carried in the vehicle, where it is parked overnight, how far it travels, and what a claim is likely to cost when one happens.
A van carrying several thousand pounds of equipment to a different site each day, parked on the street in a city overnight, is a different proposition from the same van used for deliveries and kept on a drive. The driving record is identical. The exposure is not.
The trades most often affected
The pattern tends to cover work involving height, heat, demolition or waste, and anything transporting materials that are flammable, pressurised or otherwise hazardous.
Scaffolders, roofers, demolition contractors, waste and skip operators, fuel and chemical hauliers and welders all appear regularly. So do trades with expensive portable tools, where the issue is theft rather than danger.
It is worth saying plainly that a decline usually reflects an insurer having no appetite for that trade rather than a judgement about you.
What specialist cover does differently
Specialist insurers underwrite these trades deliberately rather than filtering them out. They ask more questions, and the questions are better ones: what is actually carried, where the vehicle is kept, whether tools are removed overnight, what site security looks like.
That usually brings in the parts of the cover that matter in these trades. Goods or tools in transit, public liability where the vehicle is part of the work, and cover for equipment that a standard motor policy treats as contents it would rather not insure.
Do not be tempted to simplify your occupation
Describing yourself as a general builder when you are a demolition contractor is a misrepresentation, and it is the kind that comes to light precisely when you need to claim.
An insurer can reduce or refuse the claim and treat the policy as though it never existed. If you are unsure which description fits, ask rather than guess.
Where to go next
If the comparison sites have stopped returning quotes and you suspect your trade is the reason, you are probably right, and you are in the wrong part of the market rather than out of options.
Call Alternative Insurance Brokers on 0161 388 2520 and we will place it properly.
