Extreme Sports Insurance

What does extreme sports insurance include?

Personal Accident cover

As touched on above, you can sustain a variety of serious injuries when practising extreme sports.

Here are some common examples of injuries related to extreme sports:

Broken arms, broken wrists and dental injuries sustained while practising mixed martial arts.

Fractures suffered on landing while skydiving.

Ankle and leg breaks sustained from falling while bouldering.

Such injuries will require immediate hospital treatment and the application of a cast, depending on the injuries you’ve sustained. Longer term, you may also require physiotherapy.

Therefore, you need Personal Accident cover if you’re practising an extreme sport. This will compensate you if you suffer a serious injury and there’s also an additional benefit for death or permanent disability, meaning you’re protected for all manner of scenarios.

We provide up to £50,000 of Personal Accident cover. When you take out Personal Accident, we offer optional Loss of Earnings cover. This supports you financially if your injury is so severe that you can’t work or earn money for a long period of time.

Our Loss of Earnings cover ranges from up to £250 to £750 a week, so that you’re adequately protected financially until you get back on your feet.

Public Liability cover against injury or property damage

If you’re at a high risk of injury when practising your sport, then so are the people you train with or instruct. Even if you take the necessary precautions, accidents can still happen, whether you’re an instructor or participant.

For instance:

Instructors

You’re teaching someone a martial arts move such as a strike, grapple or takedown and give an incorrect instruction. The participant injures themselves practising the move and holds you responsible.

You’re a skydiving instructor carrying out an instructional jump. You fail to check the landing area for hazards and the person in your care injures themselves.

You’re teaching white water rafting and don’t complete a risk assessment. A student crashes into another craft or a rock and injures themselves.

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Participants

You’re in a mixed martial arts training session and incorrectly follow an instruction, accidentally injuring another participant.

You’re practising karate kicks and miss your target, damaging property in the process.

In the above instances, a compensation claim could be made against you if their injuries are serious and they deem you to be responsible.

This is where Public Liability comes in. This protects your legal accountability if a claim is made against you for injury to another person or third-party property.

We offer £1.5m, £2.5m, £5m or £10m Public Liability, depending on your needs. Public Liability comes in especially handy if you’re an instructor, as when you take this out you also get up to £5 million of FREE Professional Indemnity.

Professional Indemnity protects you against claims relating to advice you’ve given, if the person you’ve instructed suffers a serious injury or illness outside of a class or training session. Here’s an example of why mixed martial arts instructors need Professional Indemnity:

You give your students some ‘homework exercises’. One of your students injures themselves practising the exercises and claims you gave them the wrong information.

We also provide Participant to Participant Liability for extreme sports instructors. This protects you if one of your participants or players injures another participant while you’re teaching your sport and holds you responsible and the claim goes to court. As with Public Liability and Professional Indemnity, your legal fees would be covered in this scenario.

Compensation for equipment repairs and replacements

Let’s face it – extreme sports equipment often comes at a price when you add it all up. If mixed martial arts is your sport, you know that a good set of gloves, mitts and a training bag cost hundreds of pounds in total. Likewise, if mountaineering’s your sport, you know that ropes, axes, hammers, a helmet and a backpack add up to several hundreds of pounds.

No matter what extreme sport you practise, your equipment doesn’t come cheap. So, if it were damaged, lost or stolen, this would be a real body blow. Not only would you potentially be unable to practise your sport for a while, you’d have to pay to replace or repair these items yourself, which could prove pretty expensive.

However, with Equipment cover, you don’t have to. This covers your equipment against theft, loss and accidental damage, meaning the onus isn’t on you to pay out of your own pocket for repairs or replacements if something goes wrong.

We provide Equipment cover for up to £50,000 worth of equipment, with a maximum value of £2,500 for one item. What’s more, we offer free cover on the first £250 worth of equipment. This means for example, if you wish to insure £750 of equipment, you will only pay for £500 worth. This includes new-for-old cover on items which are less than a year old and were bought new. We’ll also cover older items on an indemnity basis, at their current market value.

Employers’ Liability if you employ staff

If you’re an instructor who employs staff as part of your business, by law you need Employers’ Liability insurance.

This is essential if an employee suffers an injury whilst at work and holds you responsible – which is quite possible given that they’re teaching a high-risk sport.

Having Employers’ Liability allows you to meet the costs of the compensation paid as a result of employee’s injuries.

Our Employers’ Liability provides £10 million of cover for your business.

Worldwide cover if you want to teach or practise abroad

As so many extreme sports involve exploring the great outdoors and pushing boundaries, it’s inevitable that you may take your passion abroad to test yourself in a different climate.

If you do, you need Worldwide cover for the exact same reasons as specified above.

We provide you with up to 180 days of cover wherever you are in the world – so you can have peace of mind and focus on the sport you love wherever you are.