You didn't get into your trade to become an expert in policy wording.

Quick answerA trades policy is usually five things bolted together, and you choose which ones you actually need: public liability (covers injury or damage your work causes to someone else or their property), tools of trade (covers your gear against theft and damage wherever you use it), commercial motor (your ute or van, and often the tools riding in it), personal accident (covers you, not your business, if you are hurt and cannot work), and contract works (for builders and larger jobs, covering the site itself while it is under construction).

None of that is automatic. A generic small business policy will not know that your angle grinder lives in the back of a locked ute six nights a week, or that you occasionally sub out a job to a mate with his own ABN. The sections and the limits need to be chosen around how you actually work, not assumed from a template.

None of it replaces WorkCover Queensland either. If your business employs staff rather than engaging subcontractors, you are legally required to hold your own WorkCover Queensland policy covering every worker on the books, regardless of what you carry in the bundle above. That is a separate, mandatory obligation, not an optional section to add to a trades pack.

If you hold a Queensland Building and Construction Commission licence, the QBCC's professional indemnity requirement under the Minimum Financial Requirements Regulation reaches only 22 specific design, certification and technical licence classes, each with its own required limit from $500,000 up to $5 million. General trade and building licences, including carpentry, tiling, plastering, plumbing and general builder classes, are not on that list, so most tradies reading this page do not carry a personal PI obligation tied to their licence. Queensland electricians sit outside the QBCC system altogether: you are licensed by the Electrical Safety Office, not the QBCC, so this condition never applies to you at all. Separately, most licensed residential building work over $3,300 also triggers the QBCC's Home Warranty Scheme, a statutory scheme funded by a premium the licensed contractor pays that protects your client, not you, if the job can't be finished or a defect can't be fixed.

Quick answerAn online trades policy asks you three questions and quotes you in five minutes. What it does not do is ask how your tools are actually stored overnight, whether you regularly use the same subcontractor, or what your QBCC licence class actually requires you to hold. Those answers are exactly what decide whether your policy pays.

We take your situation to a panel that can produce up to nine quotes on the business pack we use, rather than settling for whichever insurer has the flashiest app, and for the harder-to-place trades we go further again to specialist insurers a direct channel never reaches. We tell you upfront what we are paid, on every invoice, since the day this business started in 2010. We reply to new enquiries within 90 minutes during business hours, 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday. If something in your setup would trip a condition, a security requirement on your tools, a subbie arrangement that could make them your worker, a licence class that needs professional indemnity, we flag it before renewal, not after a claim.

The mistakes we see most often in trades cover, and every one of them is fixable before it costs you anything.

Assuming public liability covers a callback. It covers the damage your faulty work caused someone else, not the cost of fixing the faulty work itself. If you are relying on your PL policy to cover redoing a job, check that assumption now, not during the argument with a client.

Leaving tools in an unlocked vehicle, or in a locked vehicle with no visible sign of forced entry when they are stolen. Most tools of trade policies are conditional on secure overnight storage. It costs nothing to lock the canopy every night; it can cost you the entire claim if you do not.

Treating a subcontractor as automatically covered because they told you they have their own insurance. WorkCover Queensland's rules can deem a subbie your worker where the work you engaged them for is not part of a trade or business they regularly carry on, and any one of these is true: they do not sublet the job, they do not employ anyone, or they employ someone but still do part of the work themselves. That holds regardless of what either of you call the arrangement, and regardless of what you assumed their policy covered.

Assuming a self-employed subbie can't come back on you. At law, a self-employed subcontractor is still owed a duty of care on your job. Direct a contractor onto an unsafe site and, if they are hurt, you can be found liable at least in part for the negligence, whatever their ABN says about who they work for.

Guessing at the subcontractor payments figure, or declaring nil and forgetting. This is the question on the proposal that trade businesses answer from memory most often, and it decides more than the price. The main reason an insurer asks what you pay subcontractors is to rate the risk of one of them being hurt on your job: a business that engages contractors instead of employing them pays no WorkCover premium for them, so that injury risk does not disappear, it transfers to the liability policy, where it lands as a personal injury claim against you. Those claims are expensive, which is why insurers now price for the exposure. Note what the question is not about, because this is the misread we see most: it is not about covering the damage your subbie might do to somebody else's property. It is about your own liability when a person engaged to work for you is injured, and on many wordings the declaration is what switches that cover on. Direct insurer wordings commonly exclude personal injury to subcontractors by endorsement, while the Steadfast badged wordings we place generally cover it, particularly where the payments have been disclosed. Declare the real figure, and if you put a subbie on mid-year, tell us then rather than at renewal.

Often a much higher one than you expect. Many liability policies carry a standard excess for most claims, but a separate, larger excess for personal injury to anyone engaged to work on your site. In a recent matter, CIB flagged a $10,000 sub-contractor injury excess to a Brisbane residential building company before the insurer confirmed it, so there were no surprises. The full story is in If a subcontractor is hurt on your job, can you be held liable?

Letting your QBCC licence insurance lapse quietly. Some licence classes require professional indemnity insurance as a condition of holding the licence. An insurance gap here is not just a cover problem, it can be a licensing problem.

Skipping income protection because you feel indestructible. A tradie's business is their body. A desk job with a bad back still earns a wage. A trade with a bad back earns nothing until they are back on the tools, and public liability does not pay you a cent for that.

Under-declaring turnover to save premium. Insurers' underwriting questions change as turnover grows, so under-declaring does not just shave the premium, it can hide a question that would have triggered a referral or a decline, such as contracts over $100,000, or working for any one company with turnover over $1 million. At claim time the insurer can pull your tax return and financials, find the non-disclosure, and cancel the policy as if it never existed, mid-claim.

Setting the contents and stock sum insured low because it feels expensive. It's cheap per $1,000 of cover, so it's not the section to go small on. Price your tools, plant, materials and stock at full replacement cost, everything you would have to buy again to be back on the job, and make that total the sum insured, not a round number that felt affordable.