Simply Business Tradesman Insurance Review

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Simply Business started in 2005 as a team of five people trying to sell business insurance online at a time when almost nobody did. It now covers more than one million small businesses and landlords across roughly 1,500 trades, employs over 900 people from offices in London and Northampton, and paid out £57 million in claims during 2025 — an average of about £156,000 a day. On the tradesman side alone it puts the figure at more than 253,000 tradespeople on cover. Quotes start at £5.40 a month and the site reckons on about seven minutes to complete one.

It does not carry the risk itself. Simply Business is the trading name of Xbridge Limited, an insurance broker, and the policy you end up with is written by one of the insurers on its panel — AXA, Aviva, Zurich, Allianz, QBE, Covéa, Hiscox, Markel, Churchill or AIG among them. That is a point in its favour rather than against it: a sole trader paying £7 a month is getting paper from companies that would not normally quote a one-person business directly. The whole operation has been owned by the American insurer Travelers since 2017, which bought it from Aquiline Capital Partners for around $490 million when it had 425,000 customers and had placed £93 million of premium in 2016.

What follows is what the cover actually contains, what the excesses look like on the two wordings the site publishes openly, what paying monthly adds, and where the paperwork runs out.

What £5.40 a month buys a tradesman

The advertised entry price is for public liability alone, and the site is unusually open about what real customers pay. Ten per cent of them paid £64.78 a year or less in the first half of 2026. Two worked examples are published with the date they were generated, 12 May 2026: a Manchester domestic cleaner with under a year's experience, no employees and £1,000,000 of public liability at £7.21 a month or £86.49 a year, underwritten by Covéa; and an Edinburgh barber renting a chair, with £1,000,000 of liability and £1,000 of tools cover, at £11.46 a month or £100.08 a year, underwritten by Chiswell. A separate builder's example on the trades page comes out at £7.32 a month, £87.89 for the year.

Four public liability limits are offered — £1m, £2m, £5m and £10m — and the split between them is published too: 85% of customers take £1,000,000 and 15% take £2,000,000. That figure is worth sitting with. The £1m limit is the cheapest box on the form and the one most people tick, but plenty of commercial clients, main contractors and accreditation schemes ask for more before they will let anyone on site, and the quote journey does not know what your customers demand. Employers' liability is the exception: it is set at £10,000,000 on both published wordings, which is double the £5,000,000 the law asks for.

Beyond liability, the trades journey will add tools and equipment, owned and hired plant, contract works, stock, business legal protection and personal accident. Cover can be bought the same day, with documents issued immediately.

Nineteen insurers on the panel, and three of them are the house

Simply Business publishes its panel, which is more than most brokers do. On the business side it lists AXA (with Select and Commercial Guard variants), QBE and QBE Essentials, Covéa with its Lexicon and Elements products, AIG and AIG Essentials, Allianz, Zurich, Hiscox, Markel, Churchill, and a Barclays-badged product — 19 named entries in all. Three of those entries are described on the same page as MGAs: Finsbury, Maltings and Chiswell.

Chiswell is the interesting one. It was established in 2016, it is available only through Simply Business, and its policies are underwritten by HDI Global Specialty SE and Great Lakes Insurance SE, the Munich Re subsidiary. Finsbury is presented in the same way, and Xbridge's own complaints page names Chiswell Insurance Services and Finsbury Insurance Group as associated brands. So when the barber in the published example was quoted at £11.46 a month, the quote came from the broker's own underwriting agency rather than from a third party on the panel. Nothing about that is improper — a managing general agent binds cover on a real insurer's behalf, and HDI Global Specialty and Great Lakes are substantial names — but a shopper who believes they are comparing 19 independent insurers is not quite getting that. The public liability page describes the exercise as comparing quotes from "up to 15 insurers", which is a fourth number again.

The wording you get is decided during the quote, not before it

Because the insurer is chosen by the quote engine, a tradesman cannot read the policy that will govern their claim until they have been matched to one. Two of the wordings are on open URLs, and they differ in ways that matter.

The AXA tradesmen summary (reference ACLD0784Z-A, dated 04/21) sets public liability at £1,000,000 as standard with an upgrade to a maximum of £5,000,000 — not the £10,000,000 AXA advertises on its own site. Employers' liability runs to £10,000,000 any one event. The public liability excess is £250, rising to £500 or £1,000 for certain trades. Portable tools are limited to £500 for any one item, with an excess of 10% of each claim, minimum £100 and maximum £500. Hired plant and contract works both carry a £250 excess that becomes £500 for theft. Contract works are capped at £500,000 for any one contract, stock in trade at £2,500 and constructional plant at £25,000. Personal accident pays £2,000 on death or permanent disability and up to £500 a week for 104 weeks of temporary disability. Exclusions include asbestos, defective workmanship, and work at aircraft installations, railways, docks, quarries and power stations.

The Covéa Small Business Plus wording (reference P187E, dossier 20110324E) carries the same £10,000,000 employers' liability figure, limits tools to £500 per tool or 20% of the sum insured whichever is greater, and imposes conditions precedent that a working tradesman would want to read before a claim rather than after — hot work and welding require named fire precautions, flammable solvents require further ones, and underground services must be located before digging starts. That document is dated May 2019, which is over seven years old at the time of writing. The site's own construction page puts the range of excesses across the panel at anything from nil to £750 on public liability and up to £4,000 on contents and stock, depending on which insurer you land with.

Taking on a first employee changes the paperwork permanently

Employers' liability cover is compulsory from the day a tradesman takes on staff, and Simply Business flags the fine of up to £2,500 for every day without it. The part nobody explains is what happens to the record afterwards. Since the rules in the regulator's policy statement PS11/4 of February 2011, which came into force on 6 March 2011, every insurer must maintain an employers' liability register of policies entered into, renewed or claimed on from 1 April 2011, and from 1 April 2012 must record the Employer Reference Number — the PAYE reference issued by HMRC — against each one. Directors have had to certify those registers annually, with an assurance report, since 1 July 2012. The regulator costed the set-up of the system at about £28.4 million.

The practical effect is that the ERN a tradesman gives at quote time is the thread that lets a former employee find the right insurer twenty years later, for a disease claim that may not surface until long after the business has closed. Give a wrong or missing reference and the policy is harder to trace. It takes ten seconds at the quote stage and no comparison journey makes any fuss about it.

Spreading the cost over twelve months

Monthly payments are run through a credit agreement with Premium Credit Limited rather than by Simply Business itself, and interest is charged. The rate is not published anywhere on the site: the help pages say only that "details of the interest will be shown before going ahead and included in your credit agreement, sent after purchase". The agreement has to be signed and returned electronically within ten days of receipt, and failing to do that attracts a one-off £25 penalty charge. Renewal payments are taken nine days before the current policy expires.

The two published example quotes tell slightly different stories about what the instalments cost. The cleaner's £7.21 a month multiplies out to £86.52 against an annual price of £86.49 — effectively no uplift. The barber's £11.46 a month multiplies out to £137.52 against an annual price of £100.08, which is £37.44 or roughly 37% more for paying in twelve pieces. Both are the provider's own figures, published side by side on the same page and generated on the same day.

For context, the regulator's premium finance market study MS24/2, published in February 2026, found weighted average APRs at the end of that period of 16.5% where the insurer lends, 23.5% at intermediary lenders and 29.4% at intermediary brokers — the last of those down from 35.1% in 2022. It also found that broker compensation accounted for 55% of the total cost of credit on agreements financed by specialist providers, and that commission averaged about £45 per policy and 8% of loan value in 2023. Falling rates have saved customers around £157 million a year across the market. That work looked at motor and home policies, so none of the numbers are Simply Business's, but they are the yardstick for what an insurance instalment plan usually costs, and they explain why the annual price is worth asking for.

The complaints numbers Simply Business publishes about itself

Xbridge puts its own regulatory complaints return on the website, which very few brokers do. For the six months to 31 December 2025 it opened 1,240 general insurance complaints and closed 1,319, a rate of 1.86 complaints for every 1,000 policies sold. Eleven per cent were closed within three days and 88% within eight weeks, and 40% were upheld. The preceding half year, to 30 June 2025, ran at 1,186 opened and 1,216 closed, 1.75 per 1,000 policies, 16% closed within three days, 84% within eight weeks and 46% upheld. Credit broking is reported separately and is small: 45 complaints opened in the second half of 2025 with 38% upheld, and 59 in the first half with 30% upheld.

Two things stand out. The uphold rate sits well above the 30% average the Financial Ombudsman Service records across all financial products, and only about one complaint in nine is settled inside three days. Against that, the volume is modest for a book of more than a million policies, and the firm is publishing figures it is under no obligation to make this easy to find. The rules are changing here too: the regulator's policy statement PS25/19, published in December 2025, merges five separate complaints returns into one, moves everybody to half-yearly calendar reporting and sets a publication threshold of 500 complaints or more, with the first return under the new regime covering January to June 2027.

Claims are a third party again. Simply Business states that "our specialist partner Sedgwick pays claims on behalf of the insurer", on 0333 207 0560 around the clock, with a call back within two days of an online form and payment usually within 24 hours of a settlement being agreed. So a tradesman who buys here deals with the broker at the quote, an insurer or MGA on the certificate, a loss adjuster at the claim and a separate lender if paying monthly.

Where the paperwork runs out

The one document a broker's customer most wants before buying is the terms of business agreement, because that is where set-up fees, mid-term adjustment charges and cancellation fees live. Simply Business does not publish it. Its help pages point to it repeatedly — cancelling after the 14-day cooling-off period gives "a proportionate refund of the premium you have paid, less any set up fees and the cancellation fee as set out in your Terms of Business Agreement" — and the website terms, dated June 2026, confirm the TOBA exists and governs the relationship without saying what is in it. Searching the site turns up no copy. The one piece of good news is explicit: "there is no admin fee to make a change to your policy."

Independent ratings are thin, and partly that is the market rather than the firm. Defaqto rates insurance products rather than the brokers who introduce them, and commercial cover is much less thoroughly rated than home or motor, so no star rating for this product could be found. Smart Money People carries a business insurance score of 4.61 out of 5 from 32 reviews, last reviewed on 20 August 2026, plus 4.27 from 8 reviews on liability and 4.14 from 44 on landlord cover — small samples, and worth treating as such. The 4.5 out of 5 from about 40,000 reviews shown across the site is collected by Feefo on the firm's own behalf and carries no date or product breakdown.

Xbridge files full accounts at Companies House, most recently made up to 31 December 2025 and filed on 15 July 2026, so its revenue and commission income are a matter of public record for anyone who wants to order the document; the filing itself could not be read for this review. The firm reference, 313348, is verifiable on the Financial Services Register.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 3 September 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.