Insurance for builders

Building is physical work with a long tail. The immediate risks are obvious — falls, saws, nail guns, dropped loads, vehicles on site — and every one of them is an accident, which means ACC. The risk that actually ends building careers is slower than that. Knees, shoulders, lower backs and hips accumulate damage over twenty years of kneeling on subfloors and lifting sheets of ply, and the day they stop working is rarely traceable to a single incident.

That distinction is the whole New Zealand insurance question for a builder. If the failure is an accident, ACC weekly compensation covers most of the income. If it is degeneration, or an illness, ACC generally does not, and a builder without private cover has nothing.

The other feature of building is career shape. Most builders start on the tools and, if things go well, gradually move off them — into leading hands, site management, estimating, running a company. That drift is invisible to your insurer unless you tell them, and it is worth telling them, because an insurer that thinks you spend 90% of your week framing is charging you accordingly.

Insurers do not have a single line for “builder”. They have a set of questions, and your answers decide the band.

1. 1What proportion of your working week is manual? A builder at 100% on the tools and a builder at 20% on the tools are not the same risk, and the thresholds where insurers move you between bands are specific.
2. 2Do you work at height, and above what height? Roof work and second-storey exterior work push a builder toward roofing rates. Ground-floor and interior work does not.
3. 3What machinery do you operate — a nail gun and a drop saw, or a digger, a telehandler and a scissor lift?
4. 4Are you licensed? Licensed Building Practitioner status and a formal trade qualification generally rate better than unqualified building work.
5. 5Are you employed or self-employed, and how many hours a week? Both sit in most income protection eligibility rules.

These are the details that decide whether the cover does what you expected. Read them before you compare on price.

• The benefit period you are offered. Five years is common for a builder on the tools; cover to 65 exists and is worth asking about.
• Whether TPD is own occupation or any occupation. Any occupation asks whether you could do any job you are reasonably suited to, which a physically fit builder with a bad back will often fail.
• Whether income protection is agreed value or indemnity, especially if you trade through a company and take a low salary plus drawings.
• How ACC is offset. Most policies reduce the benefit by ACC weekly compensation, so you are largely buying illness cover.
• Sun exposure. Outdoor workers carry a real skin cancer risk, which makes trauma cover more relevant than most builders assume.
• Whether the policy covers you if you go part-time or between contracts.

Every New Zealand insurer writes income protection for builders to its own wording, and the words are where the money is. Two policies that look identical on price can pay very differently when it matters. Closing that gap is the entire job of an adviser.

• Getting the tools-versus-supervision split correctly described can move a builder a whole band, and advisers do this conversation daily.
• Some insurers currently offer a longer benefit period or better TPD definition to licensed builders than to general construction workers. Which ones changes.
• Business expenses cover, key person cover and cover for a personal guarantee on business debt are routinely missed for self-employed builders.
• If you have an existing policy written when you were fully on the tools, an adviser can put the case for a re-rate now that you are running the job rather than doing it.

There are three ways to buy life cover in New Zealand, and they are not equivalent. You can buy direct from one insurer, which means you see one product range and one underwriting appetite. You can buy through your bank, which usually means a single insurer’s product sold under the bank’s brand, often with narrower definitions. Or you can go through an adviser, who quotes several insurers at once and is required to put your interests first.

The premium you pay is the same either way. Insurers build adviser commission into their pricing whether or not an adviser is involved, so going direct does not get you a discount — it just removes the person whose job is to argue your corner at application and at claim time.

• An adviser can see which insurer is currently taking your health history on standard terms, and which one will load or exclude it.
• An adviser can structure cover across two insurers if that produces a better outcome than putting everything with one.
• An adviser handles the underwriting back-and-forth, and is the person who chases the claim when a family is least able to.
• An adviser has to document why the recommendation suits you, which is a written record you can hold them to.

We are a referral service, not an insurer. We do not quote premiums and we do not sell policies. What we do is put you in front of one licensed New Zealand adviser who can compare the market properly.

1. 1

   You tell us what you are looking at

   The form takes about a minute. Nobody asks for your medical history on a web form — that conversation happens with the adviser, properly, and only once you have decided to proceed.

2. 2

   An adviser calls you

   A licensed New Zealand adviser talks through your situation: who depends on you, what you owe, what you already have in place, and what you are actually worried about.

3. 3

   They compare the market

   The adviser quotes across the major insurers, checks which of them will take your health history on the best terms, and puts the options side by side in writing.

4. 4

   You decide, in your own time

   There is no obligation and no cost to you. If the answer is that you already have enough cover, a good adviser will tell you that.