Portable equipment insurance

Portable equipment insurance is a type of cover designed to protect your business kit if it’s accidentally lost, damaged or stolen while you’re away from your premises.

No matter how careful you are with your business equipment, a loss, a theft or damage may cause disruption – insurance can help with repairs or replacements, getting you back up and running fast.

Insurance for business equipment can also help with the cost of hiring similar substitute items. For example, a photographer’s insured lighting kit may become damaged before a client photoshoot.

In this instance, Hiscox equipment insurance could step in to cover reasonable substitute hire charges from the date of the damage, until the items are repaired or replaced – but for no longer than six months.

Insuring all your important equipment can therefore help you fulfil contracts even when unforeseen problems arise.

Business equipment insurance refers to different types of cover. Hiscox office insurance is a combination of contents cover and property insurance, while office contents insurance is purely for the office contents and business equipment within the premises.

Portable equipment insurance works as an add-on to either of these and can be especially useful for businesses whose staff visit external locations with their kit. Another additional cover type is equipment breakdown insurance.

While portable equipment insurance covers accidental theft, loss or damage, equipment breakdown cover protects against sudden mechanical or electrical failure.

You may find that your business needs portable equipment insurance if you couldn’t continue work without the kit itself, or if you would struggle to replace items independently.

Many professionals operate on the go and take their equipment with them – if this sounds like you, protection may be especially useful.

A consultant focusing on health and safety, or even education, could leave their bag holding both their laptop and smartphone on a train. Replacement costs for these expensive items can be steep for a small business.

Mobile hairdressers also rely on electrical kit – if a client were to spill a drink on a valuable hairdryer, damaging it beyond repair, equipment insurance could help with replacement costs.

Similarly, a photographer depends on the full working order of their equipment to capture beautiful images. If a camera is accidentally damaged at a wedding, insurance could help you avoid a financial hit.

To work out how much insurance cover you may need, total up the cost of replacing all your portable business equipment if it became lost, damaged, or stolen.

Once you have calculated that figure, you may choose to take out equipment insurance for at least that amount, to avoid being underinsured. This is because inadequate cover might have negative financial implications for your small business.

For instance, if you insure your business equipment for less than its total replacement value it could reduce the amount we pay – a potentially costly oversight if you need to claim.

Business equipment insurance for portable kit covers you if*:

• Something becomes lost. It happens – we’ll cover you for lost work equipment in the UK, Europe or worldwide depending on the specifics of your policy
• Your kit gets stolen. Portable business equipment can be more vulnerable to theft – we’ll cover the cost should the worst happen
• Business equipment or gadgets break. Whether it’s your fault or not, we know accidents happen so we’ve got you, and your portable items, covered
• Documents or data are lost or destroyed. Providing a backup is made at least once a week, we’ll cover the costs of reconstituting lost or destroyed documents or electronic data – cyber attacks or digital technology errors are not included in this cover

*Please refer to the policy wording for the full details of inclusions and exclusions of this cover

Insurance for your portable business equipment may become relevant as soon as you decide to take valuable pieces of kit away from your work premises.

This moment might arrive when you issue business equipment such as smartphones to employees, or set up a side project as a mobile music teacher.

Standard contents insurance might not protect hardware once you operate on a mobile basis, or if your day-to-day role involves visiting external locations.

Using items on the go can mean they’re vulnerable to damage, loss and theft, so adding portable equipment insurance to your policy can help protect your business.