AXA Tradesman Insurance Review

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AXA is one of the few names in trades insurance that carries the risk itself. There is no broker in the middle and no panel shopping your details around: the quote comes from AXA, the policy is underwritten by AXA Insurance UK plc (registered number 78950, firm reference 202312, Ipswich), and the claims line answers in the same building. The company says it protects over 867,000 businesses, and its trades list runs from electricians, plumbers and bricklayers through roofers, plasterers, tilers and kitchen fitters to locksmiths, glaziers, gardeners and window cleaners.

The headline covers are generous for a policy you can buy on a phone in ten minutes. Public liability runs to £10,000,000 and employers' liability to the same figure. Neither section carries a standard excess, so a third-party settlement is not reduced by a first slice you have to find yourself. Defending a health and safety prosecution is covered to £1,000,000, corporate manslaughter costs to another £1,000,000, and AXA pays £250 a day when you or a member of staff has to sit in court. Every business customer gets a legal and tax helpline whether or not they buy the legal expenses add-on. Prices, AXA says, start at £7 a month or £77 a year.

Around that core you bolt on what the trade needs: tools and own plant, hired-in plant, contract works, business equipment, professional indemnity, personal accident and legal expenses. It is a build-your-own policy rather than a packaged tradesman product, which suits a sole trader with a van and a drill as readily as a four-man firm on a site.

What the £10 million is actually attached to

Two separate covers carry that figure and they do different jobs. Public liability answers to the customer, the neighbour and the passer-by: the flooded kitchen, the dropped scaffold board, the child who trips over a trailing cable. Employers' liability answers to anyone working for you. AXA's published summary for the employers' liability section sets the limit at £10,000,000 for claims other than terrorism and £5,000,000 where terrorism is the cause, with £1,000,000 available for manslaughter costs and another £1,000,000 for safety legislation costs in any one period of insurance.

The detail worth knowing before you quote is that the top figure is not on offer to everybody. AXA's own trades page says plainly that "Not all occupations are eligible for £10 million coverage", and the specimen public liability summary on its business document server, reference ACLD0442Z-C, puts the choice at "between £1,000,000 and £5,000,000". That specimen is dated 05/2014; the documents governing a policy sold today are the November 2024 set, the trades public liability section ACLD0443P-G and the combined trades summary ACLD1219Z-E. Where a roofer or a window cleaner lands inside that range is decided by the quote engine and is not published in advance.

Neither liability section carries an excess. The public liability summary states that "There is no standard excess under the public liability section" and the employers' liability summary that "There are no excesses applicable to this section of cover". That beats policies which take £250 or £500 out of every third-party settlement, and it is easy to miss because nobody advertises the absence of a charge.

Cover is written for Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, with only temporary non-manual work abroad picked up. Temporary staff are carried automatically for up to 50 man days in a period of insurance, which absorbs a fortnight of extra hands but not a seasonal crew. The standing exclusions are the ones you would expect on liability paper and repay reading anyway: asbestos, design, advice and treatment, damage to property you own or have in your control, liquidated damages and contractual fines, and the cost of putting right your own defective workmanship. That last one catches people out. Fit a boiler badly and the policy answers for the water damage downstairs, not for refitting the boiler.

The number your customer picks for you

Only employers' liability is set by law. The public liability figure is set by whoever hires you, and the trade bodies put it in writing in documents most tradesmen never open.

The NICEIC Approved Contractor Scheme rules, version AC/RULES/20-06-25, make it a condition of certification at rule 6.1(j) that the business holds "at least £2 million public liability insurance covering all work being undertaken or within the scope of application", and "at least £250,000 professional indemnity insurance where the scope of application includes Periodic Inspection and Testing". An electrician who buys a £1,000,000 limit and skips professional indemnity is short on both counts, and finds out at the next assessment rather than the next claim.

TrustMark comes at it from the other end. Its scheme application, TRUSTMARK-APP/25-10-233, asks the applicant for "a copy of your Employers Liability Insurance Certificate - min £5M or written confirmation of your Sole Trader status" — an employers' liability threshold with no public liability figure attached to it at all.

Gas is where the answer surprises people. The Gas Safe Register's registration policy, document P001_REG001 version 9.0 of February 2026, says that "Although it is not a requirement of GSIUR or the Rules of Registration, it is advised that all registered businesses hold appropriate levels of insurance for all activities undertaken". A gas engineer can hold a valid registration with no liability cover whatsoever. The register does not check it, and a householder who assumes otherwise is assuming.

The practical order of business is therefore backwards from the way most people buy. Find the number your scheme, your principal contractor or your local authority framework demands, confirm AXA will sell it to your occupation, then take the quote. Doing it the other way round is how a policy ends up £1,000,000 short of a contract that has already been signed.

The bolt-ons, and what each one costs at claim time

Tools are the cover trades actually claim on, and AXA's is built around fixed sums insured starting at £1,500, with own plant and tools covered for accidental loss, theft or damage up to £2,000 on the trades product and stock protected to the same £2,000. The excess is unusual and needs reading twice: it is "Variable, offering 10% of every claim subject to a minimum of £250 and a maximum of £500". On a £1,500 sum insured, every claim below £2,500 lands on the £250 floor. A stolen £600 breaker returns about £350 before any deduction for age, which is worth knowing before paying a year's premium to protect it.

How the tools went also matters. AXA requires "signs of forced entry" to a home, vehicle or storage location, so a van left unlocked at a service station, or a bag lifted off an open site, sits outside the cover however genuine the loss. Keeping receipts and photographs is AXA's own advice and it is sound: with no proof of ownership a settlement becomes an argument.

Contract works, section ACLD0436P-H, covers the materials and the labour already sunk into a job against accidental loss, destruction or damage before handover, and specifically excludes the existing structure on the site. Hired-in plant, ACLD0437P-F, picks up the excavator you have on account from the hire yard. Personal accident, ACLD0438P-H, pays £10,000 of capital benefit or a weekly wage replacement, and for a self-employed trade it is the only cover on the schedule that pays you rather than somebody suing you.

Professional indemnity for trades sits in section ACLD1106P-G, offered up to £5,000,000 "dependant on occupation", from a quoted £6 a month. Legal expenses, ACLD1213P-D, runs to £1,000,000 in total but no more than £100,000 on any single claim, covers contract, employment, property, data protection, personal injury, tax and VAT disputes, and pays only where there is "a reasonable prospect of success". It cannot be bought on its own and attaches to an existing AXA business policy. The legal and tax helpline, by contrast, comes with every business policy at no extra cost, and for a one-man firm chasing a £4,000 unpaid invoice it may be the most used thing on the whole schedule.

A trade policy sits outside the rules that protect your van policy

This part is rarely mentioned by anyone selling business insurance, and it is not a criticism of AXA. It applies to every insurer in the market.

The FCA's pricing rules, the ones that stopped insurers charging loyal customers more than new ones, do not reach a trade policy. The regulator's own questions and answers on PS21/5, updated 13 September 2024, state that "Our pricing rules apply to firms where they sell policies of home or motor insurance (and additional policies sold alongside those products) to consumers", and define a consumer as "any natural person acting for purposes outside their trade, business or profession". A sole trader buying public liability is not a consumer by that test. His car policy is protected from price walking; the policy keeping his business alive is not.

That matters because AXA renews automatically by default. It sends three emails in the month before renewal — an explanation of the premium 27 days out, the price at 25 days and a reminder at 7 days — and you can decline renewal in your AXA account within the 30 days before the date, or move to manual renewal at no charge. Those emails are the whole of your protection here, so open the second one.

The rulebook moved further in the same direction on 9 December 2025, when the FCA's policy statement PS25/21 came into force. It created a category of "larger commercial customers" pegged to the Ombudsman's own size thresholds, replaced the mandatory 15 hours of annual staff training with a judgement call for firms, swapped the requirement to review a product every 12 months for a risk-based frequency, and removed the employers' liability notification and annual audit reporting requirements outright. None of that makes any individual policy worse. It does mean fewer external checks sit behind the paperwork than sat behind it two years ago.

There is one more gap, and it is the reason this page carries no claims acceptance rate. The FCA publishes general insurance value measures each July — acceptance rates, complaints as a share of claims registered, claims costs as a share of premium — and the 2025 data released on 21 July 2026 covers motor, home, travel, GAP, gadget, wedding, healthcare cash plans, tyre cover and legal expenses. Every one of them is a consumer product. No insurer, AXA included, publishes an acceptance rate for public or employers' liability, because nobody is required to report one.

Who you ring, and how far you can push it

AXA keeps its commercial complaints separate from its consumer ones, which is useful to know before you spend an afternoon in the wrong queue. Policy complaints go to 0330 159 1508 or commercialcomplaints.ins@axa-insurance.co.uk, and complaints about the handling of a claim go to 0345 366 5529. General business enquiries are on 0330 159 1520, weekdays 8am to 6pm. Liability claims themselves go to 0345 600 2715 or liability.claims@axa-insurance.co.uk, staffed 9am to 5pm on weekdays with an out-of-hours team picking up around the clock — which counts for more than it sounds when a pipe on your job floods a shop at eleven on a Saturday night.

If AXA's answer does not satisfy you, a small business can go to the Financial Ombudsman Service, but only if it fits the definition: annual turnover of less than £6.5 million, and either a balance sheet total below £5 million or fewer than 50 employees. The Ombudsman can only look at an act or omission that happened on or after 1 April 2019. Nearly every tradesman clears those thresholds comfortably. A growing firm should watch the turnover line, because crossing it quietly removes the free route to redress.

The award limits rose again this year. For a complaint referred on or after 1 April 2026, the Ombudsman can direct a firm to pay up to £455,000 where the act complained of happened on or after 1 April 2019, and up to £205,000 where it happened before that date. Against a £10,000,000 liability limit those figures look small, and they are: the Ombudsman is there for disputes about how a policy was sold and handled, not for the injury claim itself, which the liability limit answers.

One absence in the Ombudsman's own figures deserves stating flatly. Its annual complaints data for 2025/26, published on 21 May 2026, records 214,649 new complaints across all financial products at a 30% average uphold rate and breaks insurance into dozens of named lines. Public liability and employers' liability are not among them. There is no published uphold rate for the two covers at the centre of this policy, from AXA or from anyone else.

Reading the £7, and the things AXA does not print

The £7 a month is real, and it is also the bottom of the range. AXA's footnote defines it as the price paid by 10% of customers between April and June 2026, after an initial deposit, with interest applicable where the balance is spread across the year. The annual equivalent it quotes is £77. So a tenth of buyers paid £77 or less and nine tenths paid more, and the monthly figure is a credit price rather than a twelfth of the annual one. The £6 a month quoted for professional indemnity rests on the same footnote. Neither number is dishonest; both are the cheapest thing in the shop being used as the price on the door.

Independent verification of the service is thinner here than on AXA's personal lines. The business pages carry a Feefo score of 4.6 out of 5 from 19,163 reviews, which is a large sample and a good result, but it is shown without a date range and it covers AXA's business book as a whole rather than trades cover in particular. No Defaqto star rating for commercial trades cover could be found. That is not AXA's failing, since the ratings agencies concentrate on personal lines, but it does leave no independent scoring of this policy's features to set against a competitor's.

Fees are the real blank. AXA's business contact page says only that "a cancellation fee may also apply, as per your policy wording", and no schedule of administration, mid-term adjustment or cancellation charges appears anywhere on the business insurance site before you buy. An older specimen essential information booklet on the same document server sets a £15 administration fee for cancelling inside 14 days and £30 where a business is sold or ceases trading, but that copy is dated 10/2011 and the current booklet is ACLD0392P-R of November 2024. Treat the £15 and the £30 as historical, and ask what applies now before you pay. It is a two-minute phone call and it is the figure most likely to surprise you.

Excesses on the property sections are the other unpublished number. The tools excess is stated and the liability sections are stated as nil, but the excesses for contract works, hired-in plant and business equipment surface only on the quote. Get them in writing at the quote screen rather than waiting for the schedule to arrive.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 2 September 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.