Insurance choices for BBE members
Brass Bands England has negotiated three insurance partnerships with specialist insurance providers, which offer insurance packages and exclusive benefits to our members at competitive prices.
Insurance for Personal Instruments
Brass Bands England has a partnership with Newmoon Insurance for our members to save on insuring your instruments. This deal gives you 12 months cover for the price of 10 on Newmoon’s Harmonic policy.
Insurance For Band organisations
All of our providers have different pricing structures and individual bands should review to see which offers the best value for their band. Please click on the different insurers logo to find out about each provider.
We believe that these partners give our members access to the best possible value insurance for your band and will save your band money.
Insurance is an important aspect of banding and bands should consider what cover is best for them. Whilst the premium is clearly important, the policy coverage is equally critical and often the key features are in the small print. For example, we have heard that some providers require instruments in a locked vehicle to be kept in the glove compartment, or they will not provide cover for an instrument when not on band activity! Please consider the cover options which are right for you and if in any doubt ask the provider or seek advice from an insurance professional.
In terms of the sum insured, it is very important that you ascertain the basis of value required by insurers, especially for instruments and sheet music. We at BBE are not insurance professionals and are unable to give advice, but Paul Crump of one of our partners, Newmoon Insurance Services Ltd, has provided the following guidance:
‘It is very important to understand the basis of cover for instruments and similar items, as this affects the sum insured or value your insurers require on your policy. If insurers provide new for old cover, they normally require the values insured to represent the new value.
This is important as most policies will have an average clause and, as a simple example, if you insure an instrument at £2,000, but new it is worth £4,000 (50% of value insured) and the instrument is dropped with a repair of, say, £500, most insurers would only pay, in this example, 50% of the claim e.g. £250, as the instrument is only insured for 50% of the new value.’
Please take time to consider the values you need to insure your instruments for and the various limits required for other aspects of cover. If in doubt, please consult an insurance broker such as BBIS, Making Music Insurance Services or Newmoon Insurance Services.
Public Liability Insurance
All our insurers offer Public Liability Insurance (PLI) within their packages. We recommend that all bands should assess their own need for PLI, but a minimum of £5,000,000 cover is advised. There are venues (such as shopping centres etc.) that require higher PLI than this and we would advise bands to consider if a higher level of cover is suitable to their needs given the number of performances and audiences involved in their activities. Some of our partners' policies come with £10,000,000 cover as standard.