Why do beauty therapists and beauticians need insurance?
Salon injury
You have a regular client booked in for a pamper session. Moving from their leg wax appointment to a different therapy room for their facial, they slip and injure their elbow. Unfortunately, your assistant recently swept and mopped the salon floor and didn’t put out wet floor signage – if your client claims, your beauty business might need to lean on insurance. Tailoring your therapist policy to include combined professional, treatment and public liability insurance can help your beauty business cover compensation expenses and legal costs.
Treatment reaction
A customer books in for an eyebrow tint and you carry out the required patch test with no adverse reaction, but the treatment itself causes blisters. Making your clients feel comfortable while they’re with you and happy after their treatment is your focus. However, when you’re dealing with beauty products and delicate skin, things don’t always go to plan. No matter who’s at fault, adding combined professional, treatment and public liability cover to beauty insurance can help protect a therapist against the cost of settling or defending a claim.
Important equipment
The equipment you use is vital to the smooth running of your beauty salon. When your spray tan machine is damaged, you have to choose between getting it fixed or cancelling a full day of wedding party appointments. Property cover with Hiscox helps protect both your beauty premises and salon equipment. So, whether your building faces fire, flooding, a break-in, or accidental damage, a tailored beauty insurance policy can help safeguard against the cost of repairs and replacements.
What insurance is available for beauty therapists
Professional treatment liability insurance and public liability insurance can be helpful for beauty therapists. So, we have combined them into one product – professional, treatment and public liability insurance. Though we talk about them separately below, professional, treatment and public liability insurance is a combined cover with one combined limit. You can get public liability cover as a beautician by purchasing this combined cover. You can also contact us by phone or email to discuss your business insurance options.
Professional treatment liability insurance
Beauticians provide hands-on treatments and offer beauty guidance to clients – professional, treatment and public liability insurance is designed to provide cover for the risks that come with this work. A beauty therapist might need to lean on insurance if a client takes legal action for an illness or injury caused by treatments or advice given by a beauty salon employee. They may even cite negligence or malpractice and if they do, this cover can help with defending or settling a claim.
Public liability insurance
A beauty therapist’s role involves contact with clients, but you’ll encounter members of the public too. You might have an A-board set up outside your salon that a passer-by trips over, or you could accidentally knock over a client’s expensive vase at a home appointment. Whether you’re a mobile therapist or have a beauty salon, professional, treatment and public liability insurance can help cover legal costs if someone claims they’ve been injured, or their property damaged, due to your work.
Portable equipment insurance
While your role is dependent on your skills and expertise, you also rely on specialist equipment for beauty treatments. Whether you have a beauty salon or work as a mobile therapist, portable equipment insurance can assist with repairs or replacements if your kit is lost, stolen or damaged. Equipment breakdown cover serves as an extra layer of protection if steamers, wax melters or microdermabrasion machines stop working, bringing added reassurance for a beautician on the go.
A beauty insurance policy can also be tailored to include other relevant covers including employers’ liability insurance, personal accident cover, cyber and data insurance and cover for legal protection.
These are just some of the types of business insurance for beauticians that we can offer. We can provide other specific types of cover and build them into a policy that’s tailored to the exact needs of your business.
Get your quoteInsurance for beauty therapists and beauticians: FAQs
Do I need to be ABT accredited for Hiscox beauty insurance?
As long as you hold the qualifications and accreditations that are required to carry out your treatments, Hiscox beauty insurance will usually be available to your therapy business.
You won’t need to produce your qualifications at the time of buying, but it might be important to note that you will likely be asked to prove you’re a qualified practitioner if you need to make a claim.
Qualifications accredited by professional bodies include Associated Beauty Therapists (ABT), the British Association of Beauty Therapy & Cosmetology (BABTAC) and the Hairdressing and Beauty Industry Authority (external link) (HABIA).
What insurance do I need as a mobile beauty therapist?
Portable equipment cover can help with repairs or replacements of your mobile therapist kit, from your treatment bed to the laptop your booking system operates from.
Being on the go means you’ll interact with many people, including clients as you provide beauty services in their homes. Adding a professional, treatment and public liability policy can help mitigate the impact of accidents and protect against the hands-on nature of your work as a beauty therapist.
Self-employed beauticians may find personal accident cover reassuring too since this can help protect your livelihood if you’re in an accident and unable to work as a result.
Learn more about types of business insurance and how they work.
As a beauty therapist, I offer lots of different beauty treatments, will one policy cover them all?
When building your beauty insurance with Hiscox, it’s important to declare each treatment you offer in your salon, or as a mobile therapist, so we can review your policy.
You may discover you offer some beauty and wellness treatments we don’t insure, but by declaring everything we can ensure we get things right. If you are unsure what to declare, contact us.
However, all treatments we insure will be covered by a single policy. So whether you offer threading or waxing, spray tans, facials or makeup services, we’ll work with you to tailor a policy that fits your business.
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