COVERTRADE SERVICES
Mobile Hair & Beauty Insurance
Comprehensive protection for mobile hair and beauty professionals on the move.
No Premises Means A Different Policy
A salon policy is built around a building: contents, stock, glass, business interruption if the shop closes. None of that applies to you. A mobile policy has a different job: cover you at whatever address you are working at today, and cover the kit that travels between them.
Which is why buying the wrong one is such a common mistake, and why it usually goes unnoticed. The policy looks fine on paper. It is only when a claim happens in a client's living room, or a bag is taken from a car boot, that the mismatch shows.
Three things do the work here: treatment liability that follows you, kit cover that genuinely applies in a vehicle, and business use on your motor policy. The sections below take each in turn.
Your Kit Lives In The Car
Your kit is your business, and it spends its life in a car, which is where the conditions on most policies are tightest.
Overnight is the big one. Cover for equipment in a vehicle very often requires forced entry to a locked car, and many policies exclude theft from a vehicle left overnight altogether. Kit left in the boot outside your house is frequently uninsured, and that is where most of it gets taken from.
Single-item limits catch people too. A general kit figure can carry a low cap on any one item, so the expensive dryer or the machine you saved for may not be fully covered unless it is specified by name.
Business use on the car. Driving between clients is business use and a social, domestic and pleasure policy does not cover it. It is a small addition and a serious gap without it.
Working In Someone Else’s Home
Working in people's homes changes what goes wrong. The claims are rarely dramatic and almost always involve someone's furnishings.
Colour on a carpet, a spill on a sofa, a burn mark on a worktop from a straightener, a knocked-over lamp. Public liability handles damage to their property and injury to people around the appointment, which is most of it.
What it does not handle is harm caused by the treatment, a reaction to colour, a chemical burn. That is treatment liability, and it is excluded from public liability rather than included in it. For anyone working with colour or chemicals in someone else's home, it is the section that matters most.
Mobile Essentials
What a mobile policy has to do that a salon one does not.
- Cover at any address, not one premises
- Kit covered in the car, including overnight
- Treatment liability, not just public
- Business use on your motor policy
- Salon days declared, if you do both
- Flexible payment options
- Dedicated account managers
- Out-of-hours contact should you need to make a claim or just have a question
- A quick and easy, pain-free service
- An excellent customer experience
Treatment Liability Travels With You
The cover that matters most is the same one a salon needs, and for the same reason. Public liability handles accidents around the appointment, a knocked-over lamp, a spill on a carpet. Harm caused by the treatment itself, a colour reaction or a burn, is treatment liability, which public liability is not designed to answer.
Patch testing applies exactly as it does in a salon: typically 24 to 48 hours before any colour, for every new client, and again when a product changes. Working mobile makes it easier to skip and no less of a condition. Keep a dated record with the client’s signature, because it is the record rather than the conversation that answers a claim.
If You Also Work From A Salon
Plenty of stylists and therapists do both, a few days renting a chair or a room, the rest mobile. Both need declaring, because a policy written for salon work does not automatically follow you to a client’s house, and one written for mobile work may not cover you on someone else’s premises.
It is a straightforward thing to arrange when it is known at the outset. The awkward version is discovering at claim time that the appointment happened in the half of your work the policy was not written for.
What Clients And Venues Ask For
Individual clients rarely ask. Care homes, hotels, wedding venues, film and TV work and agencies almost always do, and what they want is a certificate showing public and treatment liability at £1m, £2m or £5m, in your name and in date.
Keep a copy on your phone. Being able to send it the same afternoon is often what wins the booking, particularly for venue and care home work where the client has their own compliance to satisfy. Premiums can be paid monthly or annually.
What We Need To Quote
The treatments you offer including any beauty work, your qualifications, roughly what you turn over, whether you work only mobile or also from a salon, the replacement value of your kit and where it is kept overnight, whether you work in care homes, venues or on location, and any claims in the last five years.
Protect Your Business
So why wait? Protect your business today with CoverTrade's comprehensive insurance coverage. Contact us now to schedule a consultation with one of our expert advisors.
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this policy.
- Hairdressers insuranceOnce you take a chair or a unit, premises cover becomes the bigger part of the policy.
- Beauty salon insuranceIf you add beauty treatments, they are rated apart from hair.
Common questions
Is mobile hairdressing insurance different from salon insurance?+
Yes, and buying the wrong one is a common mistake. A salon policy is built around premises: contents, stock, glass, business interruption if the shop closes. A mobile policy has no premises to insure and instead has to cover you at whatever address you are working at, plus your kit while it travels. If you work both mobile and from a salon, both need declaring, because neither policy automatically covers the other setting.
Is my kit covered in the car?+
Only if the policy says so, and the conditions are where it gets caught. Cover for equipment in a vehicle very often requires forced entry to a locked car, and many policies exclude theft from a vehicle left overnight entirely, so kit left in the boot outside your house is frequently uninsured. Check whether overnight cover applies, what the single-item limit is, and whether an expensive item needs specifying.
Do I need business use on my car insurance?+
Yes. Driving between clients for work is business use, and a social, domestic and pleasure policy does not cover it. It is usually a small addition to the premium and a serious problem if it is missing: an accident on the way to an appointment could leave you uninsured on the vehicle and facing a motoring offence, quite separately from your business cover.
Am I covered working in a client's home?+
That is exactly what a mobile policy is for. Public liability handles damage to their property and injury to people around the appointment; treatment liability is the part that responds to harm caused by the treatment itself, which public liability is not designed to answer. The claims we see most often are unremarkable (colour on a carpet, a spill on furniture, a burn from a straightener) which is why the treatment section matters as much as the headline figure.
Do care homes and venues need to see my insurance?+
Almost always. Care homes, hotels, wedding venues, agencies and any film or TV work will ask for a certificate showing public and treatment liability, typically at £1m, £2m or £5m, in your name and in date. Keep a copy on your phone. Being able to send it the same afternoon often decides who gets the booking, because the venue has its own compliance to satisfy.
How much is mobile hair and beauty insurance?+
We do not hold enough mobile policies to give you a figure that would mean anything, so we will not invent one. As context, freelance and mobile cover in this trade is widely advertised from around £45 to £60 a year for liability only, and adding kit cover and a fuller treatment list moves it up from there. Call 02382 000820 with your treatment list and kit value for a real number.
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