Written by Saskia Van Oostveen
Account Manager
On this page
- Can you buy general liability insurance online?
- Can a broker get your business in front of these underwriters?
- Who pays the claim on a policy from an agency you have never heard of?
- How does a general liability policy get quoted?
- Which businesses does the packaged market have no box for?
- Find out whether this market is open to your business
- FAQ
Can you buy general liability insurance online?
A whole liability insurance market operates in Australia that you generally cannot reach from a search bar. Its insurers and specialist agencies price liability one business at a time, by hand, for the businesses a packaged policy cannot price. In the markets we place into, nothing is built to sell to the public, because everything in them is built to deal with licensed brokers. In the trade this cover is called general liability insurance.
The liability cover you can buy online is usually the public liability section inside a packaged business policy. That is the business pack, one policy with liability as one section among several. A standalone general liability policy is a different product, placed through a broker. An underwriter at an insurer or agency prices it, a person who reads your business and sets its premium, where a packaged policy runs your answers through a rating table, the insurer's price list.
Type what you do and the word "insurance" into a search bar. You get a long list of packaged small business policies. Each can quote you online.
Can a broker get your business in front of these underwriters?
If your business is one this market writes, yes. The underwriters who price standalone general liability sit at insurers and at specialist underwriting agencies, and in our experience the agencies do not advertise to you. An underwriting agency is a specialist firm that prices and issues policies for an insurer. Getting in starts with a broker who knows which of them writes your kind of work.
Insurers and agencies in this market deal with brokers because a broker brings the risk already gathered and the questions already answered. We also carry a professional obligation of our own for the accuracy of what we present.
One large specialist agency's automated rating tool quotes more than 400 standard occupations, and a separate senior liability team underwrites the harder risks by hand.
Direct insurer vs broker covers what a broker reaches that you cannot, across every type of insurance.
Who pays the claim on a policy from an agency you have never heard of?
The agency does not pay the claim. The agency holds a written authority from an insurer, or from underwriters at Lloyd's of London, to price and issue policies on its behalf. The agency does the underwriting, and the money behind your policy, which pays a claim within its wording, belongs to that insurer or those Lloyd's underwriters.
The insurers also keep liability underwriters of their own, who write this cover beside the agencies. Whoever stands behind your policy is named in your policy documents.
How does a general liability policy get quoted?
A person reads a written case about your business and prices it. Your broker prepares what the market still calls a quote slip. It sets out who you legally are, what you physically do all day, how big you are and what has gone wrong before. A liability underwriter reads it and prices your business individually. That underwriter sits at an insurer, or at a specialist agency writing on an insurer's or Lloyd's money.
The underwriter wants your exact legal names, as they are registered. A claim later has to attach to one of them. They want what you do described in full, past the trade label, with your background and experience in that work. They want your turnover twice: the figure you estimated last year and the figure you reached. And they want your claims history in full, including what each claim settled for as well as how many there were.
A quote form can only ask the questions it has a box for. A written case can carry what a box cannot. It can show what makes your operation safer than its trade suggests. It can explain why last year's claim will not repeat, or note the certification nobody thought to ask about. Each of those can change what the underwriter offers.
Underwriters in this market read these cases all day. They notice when a case is thin, or vague about the hard parts, and they price what they are shown. So a general liability quote takes longer than an online one, because an underwriter reviews the business and may ask further questions.
Which businesses does the packaged market have no box for?
Insurers write packaged business policies across thousands of occupations. Every one of those policies carries acceptance criteria, the rules for which businesses it will take. An occupation outside them cannot be negotiated at the form. Where that list ends, the specialist market begins. Two examples are demolition, site preparation and asbestos work, and abattoirs, poultry processing and cold storage.
The packaged policy covers the overwhelming majority of Australian small businesses properly. A business outside those criteria gets no premium at all at the form.
Work at height, with heat, in other people's occupied premises or among the public in numbers may already put a business at the edge of what a packaged policy will price sensibly. Heavy plant, or an industry with a difficult claims record, may do the same. You would usually know, because the quotes come back awkward, slow or not at all.
For most businesses a package stays the right home for liability, because minimum premiums in this market generally start well above a business pack's liability section. Our general liability insurance page sets out who the standalone market is for and what the policy covers. A production company, publisher, or agency usually needs media liability insurance, not a general liability policy.
Find out whether this market is open to your business
Tell us what your business does. We will tell you straight whether a package suits it, or whether its liability belongs with an underwriter who prices it on its own.
Find out where your liability should sit
Or ring us on 07 3292 1111.
FAQ
What is general liability insurance in Australia?
General liability insurance is public and products liability cover bought as a policy of its own, outside a package. It deals with the same risk as the liability section of a package: harm your business causes to other people or their property. Consolidated Insurance Brokers places it with liability underwriters who price each business on its own. That suits a business a package cannot price properly.
Why can I not buy general liability insurance online?
Because nothing in the markets we deal with was built to sell to the public. The insurers and agencies that write this cover work through licensed brokers, so there is no online quote form to fill in. They sell through brokers because a broker brings each business already written up and the underwriter's questions already answered.
Do I need a broker to get a general liability quote?
In practice, yes, because these policies are quoted broker to insurer, business by business. We do the part that decides the answer: writing the case, choosing which underwriters see it, and dealing with what comes back. The underwriters we deal with do not take enquiries from the public.
Who pays if I claim on a policy from an underwriting agency?
The insurer or the Lloyd's underwriters whose money stands behind the policy pay the claim, not the agency. We tell you plainly whose money is behind any quote we arrange, and they are named in your policy documents.