New Plant Insurance Fire Protection Requirements

It is not uncommon for plant insurers to request high value equipment is protected, especially if the equipment is operating inside a building.

If you haven’t already been asked to fit fire suppression, it is quite likely that when you come to renew your policy your broker may mention it to you.

In some cases, by fitting Fire Protection you can dramatically reduce your premiums and excess, and other times it is simply a condition to being accepted for insurance at all.

You can find ‘a fire system’ on the market and pay very little, and as such the engineering quality of the system won’t be very good, and will likely fail to suppress a fire successfully. This is why the majority of insurers are now requesting a system meets FM approved standards.

Aviva is the largest commercial insurer in the UK and a leading insurer of mobile plant, and a supporter of FM Certification as a loss engineering standard.

“We believe risk management should be an integral part of all business operations to help manage risk and reduce claims experience. Fire is the cause of a substantial proportion of mobile plant losses so we recommend the use of automatic fire suppression systems which meet the appropriate FM approved standard. This approval standard provides assurance of manufacturing, design and installation quality, reducing the likelihood of damage and subsequent losses”

- Tim Horsfall, UK Technical Underwriting Manager of Aviva

If you want to look into the benefits of approved fire protection, and whether it may positively impact your insurance, please contact us.