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Q: Who is your Nursery Insurance cover designed for?
A: Our Nursery insurance cover is designed for full-time, privately owned day care nurseries & kindergartens operating from purpose built or specifically converted premises. We can also provide cover for nurseries and kindergartens operating as part of a children’s centre.

Q: Does my business have to be registered with the appropriate care standards authority (i.e. Ofsted, Care Commission etc.) before I can obtain a quotation?
A: We will provide you with a quotation without the business having been registered with the appropriate care standard authority but you will not be able to take out cover until your registration has been confirmed.

Q: Who underwrites the policy?
A: All of our policies for the childcare sector are underwritten by Norwich Union, the UK’s largest general insurer. The legal expenses cover provided under all of our childcare policies is provided by ARAG plc and underwritten by Brit Insurance Ltd

Q: What makes your Nursery Insurance cover different from others available?
A: We’ve used our extensive knowledge and experience of the childcare sector to continually refine our policy coverage ensuring that it meets the needs of nursery operators. We’ve refined our legal expenses cover to provide you with market leading coverage and policy limits plus, unlike many other policies, all legal claims under our policy will be handled by one firm of solicitors who work extensively in the care sector. This means that you will receive legal representation from people that understand the environment you work in every day.

In addition to all of the above as a policyholder of Pound Gates you can also access our online health & safety, employment law resource and access some fantastic exclusive deals with suppliers to the childcare sector.

Q: How should I approach setting my sums insured?
A: In order for your policy to operate effectively it is essential that you set your cover at the right level. You must establish exactly how much it would cost you to replace the entire contents of the business (as new) and insure for this amount. Do not forget to include the contents of any standard construction (built of brick and/or stone and roofed with slate or tile) outbuildings and outside fixed play equipment when setting the initial level of cover. You will also need to tell us if you are storing equipment in a non-standard construction outbuilding (i.e. a wooden shed) as this will not be covered automatically by your policy.

If you are looking to insure the building under your policy then your sum insured should represent the current re-build value (not market value) and include an allowance for architects and surveyors fees, landlord’s fixtures and fittings, outbuildings, boundary walls, gates, fences, hedges, terraces, drives and footpaths.

We cannot advise you on the appropriate sum insured to select for your building, but we can recommend that you have the building valued by a quantity surveyor (and repeat this exercise at least every 2-3 years).

For guidance on how to select your Business Interruption – Gross Fees sum insured please see the next question.

Q: How should I approach setting my Gross Fees sum insured under the Business Interruption section?
A: Knowing how to arrive at an adequate sum insured for Gross Fees has always been a tricky area for policyholders. We’ve tried to take the worry away for many of you by providing a standard Gross Fees sum insured of £500,000 with a 12 month indemnity period. This limit can be increased and the indemnity limit widened to cater for all sizes of nursery business.

Below is a simple formula you can use to work out what your Gross Fees sum insured should be and to work out whether our standard limit of £500,000 is adequate for you.
 

Average income per child, per week	X	Average number of children at any one time (occupancy level)
For example: Average income per child of, say, £150 Business open 52 weeks per year	X	Average number of children of, say, 50
£150 x 52 weeks per year (£7,800)	X	50 children = £390,000 Gross Fees

This Gross Fees figure should then be adjusted to reflect for the forthcoming financial year / insurance period:

• anticipated business growth

• inflation

For example you may forecast that your business will grow by 15% during the next year. Inflation might be running at 5%. Taking into account these figures, the £390,000 Gross Fees figure shown in the example above would become an annual Gross Fees sum insured of £471,000 (rounded up)

Finally, you should adjust the annual Gross Fees sum insured to reflect your chosen indemnity period.

The indemnity period represents the maximum period over which the business could be affected by the occurrence of loss or damage. In other words if you were to suffer a large claim which interrupted or temporarily closed your business how long would you anticipate that it would take your business to completely recover financially to the position just prior to the loss.

Our policy comes with a standard indemnity limit of 12 months, meaning that following a loss your business would have to have completely recovered within 12 months. We can increase the indemnity limit to 18 months, 24 months or even 36 months, should you feel that a longer period is required.

If you select an indemnity period greater than 12 months then you will need to increase your annual Gross Fees sum insured to reflect this as follows: -
 

Indemnity period	Multiple
12 months	1 x annual gross fees sum insured
18 months	1.5 x annual gross fees sum insured
24 months	2 x annual gross fees sum insured
36 Months	3 x annual gross fees sum insured

If you have a question with regards to any of our products or services you can e-mail us by clicking here. We promise to respond to you within 24 hours. If you would rather talk to one of our experienced team then you can call us on 01473 216406 between 9am and 5:30pm, Monday to Friday.