Insurance for woodworkers: keeping the cost down
After a year-long hiatus, the Victorian Woodworkers Association is once again offering insurance cover that's tailored to the needs of woodworkers. We asked Stephen Ziguras, VWA President, to give us some of the background to what's on offer.
Q: When did the VWA first become an intermediary for woodworkers’ insurance and why?
Public liability insurance for market stall holders became compulsory during the 1990s following a series of accidents. However, insurance premiums were quite expensive for craftspeople selling their work occasionally or running small businesses. When we were approached by a broker who could offer cheaper insurance for makers as a bulk program, we agreed to take it on.
Q: How is the insurance offered especially tailored to the needs of woodworkers?
Our scheme has generally targeted small scale hobbyist and professional makers rather than larger commercial operations and that has enabled us to keep the cost down. Also it has covered people teaching in classes of up to 10 students which has been a great boon for many independent makers.
Q: What has the uptake been like?
Over the years, the uptake has varied from year to year, generally several hundred across Australia. It dropped briefly during COVID as markets were not operating and makers faced other restrictions.
Q: Why was insurance not available last year? What happened?
After spending a year setting up a new website which allowed members to join and pay online, our insurer told us via our broker they had decided to discontinue the scheme, which was a bit of a shock. We never really found out why but got the impression an internal review had refocussed the direction of some of their work. We also heard from several brokers that an increase in regulatory requirements had caused the industry some difficulty.
Q: Does the new insurance differ?
It took us some time to find a new insurer that we thought was suitable for our members. We eventually teamed up with the brokers Consolidated Insurance Agencies (CIA) and Berkeley insurance. They had provided public liability insurance to Australian woodwork clubs through a group scheme with the Council of Woodworking Clubs so they knew the industry well and had proven excellent partners for the CWC.
The new scheme is different in a couple of ways. In the past we offered both $10m and $20m coverage but the industry has moved to $20m as the base rate of coverage so now we only offer that.
In the past we had restrictions on turnover and what types of craft could be covered but neither of those apply in the new scheme which is great. While the scheme is still aimed at small independent makers, they can be earning more than $100,000 which would have excluded them in the past. It covers volunteers or interns helping makers, and is also available to anyone in Australia.
Q: How does this benefit the VWA?
Our mission is to support woodworking and woodworkers: the new scheme has allowed us to offer the best value public liability insurance for craftspeople in Australia ($250 for $20m coverage is the most reasonably priced policy in the country). Since setting up the new website, people can join and pay by card which has sped up the application process considerably.
We also include a facility for woodworkers to set up a maker profile on our website which is posted to social media, and to sign up for a newsletter for custom work requests. We are now exploring whether we can offer other types of insurance too – that might happen down the track.
Learn more at https://vwa.org.au/insurance-new/
Stephen Ziguras is a designer maker and President, Victorian Woodworkers Association
Photo: Raf Nathan