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Chartering out your own boat

Boat insurance term, area: Contract

Letting other people use your boat for money, through an agency, an online platform or privately, changes the risk an insurer originally looked at. Someone nobody assessed is at the helm, and the boat goes out far more often than it would in private use. Most wordings therefore treat paid hire as something that has to be applied for and written into the policy document before the first handover, and many require a proper hire or tenancy agreement behind it. Where hire periods are insured at all, the protection is often secondary, so the hirer's own insurer is asked first.

What to check: Two questions for your own contract: does it allow paid hire at all, and must it be applied for and shown on the policy document before the first booking? And during a hire period, does the protection rank first or only behind the hirer's own insurance?

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