Amanda Morris talks Mining Contractor Insurance

ARMA Insurance Hunter Valley’s Managing Director Amanda Morris is passionate about the clients she serves which are Mining Contractors. It’s a complex area of insurance and ARMA Insurance works very hard to make sure their Contactors that work in Mining are fully protected.

“When it comes to Mining Contractor Insurance, what makes ARMA Insurance brokers different is that we know what we’re doing. We live in the heart of the Hunter Valley. Mining is our backyard and mining contractor insurance is not everyday insurance that you write. It’s a complex product and it needs expertise behind it and we’ve got that.

A mining contractor should start looking around for a new insurance policy, I would say, six to eight weeks prior to the renewal date of their existing policy because you do need time to research it, understand what they’re doing in the mine and we need time to make sure that we get them the right cover for what they need.

Mining contractor insurance is a collection of policies depending on the occupation of the client. So if they’re giving advice they will need Professional indemnity insurance. If they’ve got tools they will need “Tools of trade”, “Commercial Motor”, Public Liability, workers comp. There are a suite of products that they need and again, they’re tailored to the mining industry so it’s a niche industry that needs expertise and advice.

Lots of things can go wrong with a mining contractor when it comes to insurance. Mining is still a red flag for a lot of insurance companies. A lot of direct insurance companies don’t cover mining, Its actually a full exclusion in their treaty.

See Video Here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvqYooVERYk

Why an Insurance Broker with Mining Insurance expertise is so important.

“So you do have people that will ring a direct insurer and they may have a partner and they ring a direct insurer and the insurance company says “What does your partner do?” And they say “He’s a mechanic” and they’ll go “OK, No worries, we do mechanics.” Unfortunately, a mechanic working on a holden Commodore, or a Ford is vastly different from a heavy diesel mechanic working on a dragline on a mine site. So it’s a massive pitfall in the industry that mining contractors are not asking the question of the insurer or their broker “Does my insurance cover working in mining?”

When it comes to compliance for a Mining Contractor it’s a nightmare for the. The Paperwork side of their insurance is something they don’t want to deal with but they need that to get on site. All the mining contractors require a certificate of currency to get on site and if you don’t have that by a certain due date they can get kicked off site or locked out so when it comes to being compliant, you really need to be on your game as a broker and we nail that. We make sure our contractors are never locked out because we’ve got the work done, the policies correct and the certificate of currency is in their inbox.