Does working from home affect my home insurance?

With Covid restrictions, better work life balance, and employee satisfaction it is easy to see why more and more businesses are offering a flexible working environment. However, does this new arrangement affect your home building insurance?

One of the key things to keep in mind when it comes to your home building insurance and working from home is the nature of the work that you carry out. DSH Insurance’s home building policy does provide some level of cover for people who work from home. When it’s about your home insurance cover, your nature of work refers to the work that’s clerical in nature – i.e. computer based, ‘office work’ or surgery

I run a business from home, do I need to inform DSH Insurance?

In short, yes. DSH Insurance’s standard home building insurance policy will typically not provide sufficient cover if you run a business from home. Your building cover extends coverage to your home office or surgery, but excludes any part of the building used for business, manufacturing or trade. 
If you receive visitors to your home as part of doing business or store stock/goods at your home address associated with your business, these may both have more of an impact on your home insurance needs. The risk for accidents to happen because of running a business from home are higher, and your policy is unlikely to provide sufficient cover for these types of risk.

Anyone who has established, is planning to establish, a business from home during, or has moved the running of their business to their home premises should email DSH insurance at dsh@dva.gov.au  to advise us of the type of business that is run on site. 

What if my tenant is running a business from home?  

It is the responsibility of the tenant to advise you if they are running a business from home. DSH Insurance will require an advice from you in writing on their business details to determine the coverage. 

For more information, please refer to DSH Insurance home building insurance PDS (page numbers 27 and 34) or go to home building insurance FAQ’s

You can also mail us your queries