Mine-Site Subcontractor Placed at $20M After Eight Declines

A Western Australian sole-trader poly-welding contractor came to Tank Insurance needing $20 million Public Liability insurance so they could keep working on mine sites.

They are a plastic-fusion specialist with around 20 years' experience, welding and supporting HDPE poly pipe on iron ore, gold and lithium mine sites across WA. They work 100% off-site as a subcontractor, with no workshop, no hot-works permits and no earthmoving.

Mine-site principal contracts routinely require subcontractors to hold $20 million Public Liability before they are allowed on site. For a sole trader used to a $5 or $10 million limit, that requirement alone can be a shock, and it sits outside the appetite of most of the standard market.

We treated this as an underwriting-appetite problem, not a simple price comparison.

The key was separating what the client actually did from what underwriters might assume when they hear "mine site". So we framed the submission around the real exposure:

• off-site only, with no fabrication workshop
• poly-pipe welding, with no hot works
• no plant operation and no earthmoving
• the specific mine types worked on
• the need for a $20 million limit to meet principal-contract requirements

We then marketed the risk to around a dozen markets, including specialist liability underwriting agencies that assess this kind of work by hand.

Eight insurers in the mainstream market declined the risk. A high-risk environment, a high required limit and a sole-trader structure stacked up at once, and that combination sits outside standard Public Liability appetite.

Terms also came with a condition: they were subject to the client's ABN being registered and active before the policy could be bound. The client was still getting their ABN active, so we secured the terms and kept the placement ready to go.

We placed $20 million Public Liability with a specialist liability underwriting agency at approximately $3,200 a year, with the option to pay around $260 a month. That was the bottom of a spread that ran to over $5,000, so getting the occupation described accurately made a real difference to the price.

For mine-site contractors, the difference between a blanket decline and a workable $20 million policy often comes down to how the work is presented and which markets are approached. You can read the full story in our guide to public liability insurance for mining contractors.