Employers Liability
Insurance against claims by workers for compensation for illness or injury not covered by ACC.
What Is It?
While ACC covers the cost of most accidental injury suffered by workers in New Zealand, there are some circumstances where it does not. These include illness and sickness, heart attack or stroke due to work stress, disease caused by gradual process, stress, depression, anxiety, hurt feelings or other emotional issues.
Employers liability insurance covers these.
Definition
Employers liability insurance indemnifies you against any Valid Claim that You become legally liable to pay as Damages as a result of the Employee sustaining Personal Injury in New Zealand that arose out of or in the
course of such Employee’s employment in Your Business and for which the Employee is not covered under the Accident Compensation Act 2001.
Claim Examples
DISEASE
During the renovation of an old multi-storey building several of the builder’s employees contracted Legionnaires disease. It was determined that the source of the infection was in the air conditioning system which the Insured, who was also the building owner, had failed to maintain adequately. As there was no ACC cover for the illness, the employees sued the Insured for loss of wages and other general damages. The Insured’s claim was accepted under its Employers Liability policy and was settled out of court for $34,000. Legal costs amounted to $28,000.
STRESS
A project manager was asked to temporarily take on additional work when a colleague left suddenly. After almost a year this workload still had not decreased and the project manager began suffering from stress related illness. They took their employer to court, with the building company’s costs being covered by their employers liability insurance.
MELANOMA
A worker was diagnosed with melanoma after working for many years on building sites. As cancer is not covered by ACC they took their employer to court to demand compensation. The company’s legal costs and the damages imposed were covered by their employers liability insurance.
How Much Does It Cost?
The cost of defending a claim for compensation could easily run into thousands of dollars, not to mention any compensation that may be awarded to the employee. Compared to this, employers liability insurance is an essential investment in managing your risk.
Terms & Conditions
View our current policy wordings. Existing policyholders may be on a previous version. Specific endorsements to this wording will be individually noted on your policy schedule. In some cases we may recommend an alternative insurer, if so we’ll send you their policy terms & conditions.