Using your own car for client work
In short
- A private motor policy is priced for the use you declared, and carrying clients or equipment for payment is a different use.
- The consequence of getting this wrong appears at claim time, not at renewal, which is why it stays invisible.
- Driving a client’s own car is a separate question again, and the answer sits in that car’s policy and in your agreement.
This is the most contradicted question in Australian care work. Support workers, aged care workers, community nurses and mobile allied health practitioners all use their own vehicles to visit or transport clients, and the advice available to them is a mess of confident, opposing answers.
The underlying mechanism is simple even where the answers are not: an insurer priced a policy against a described use, and the description has to match reality.
What "business use" actually asks
A motor proposal asks how the vehicle is used because use drives risk. Commuting, private use, business use and carrying passengers for reward are different things and are rated differently.
The common error is reading "business use" as "I own a business". An employee using their own car to visit clients, carry equipment or transport a participant is using it for business purposes regardless of who employs them. Whether that changes the premium is the insurer’s question; whether it was disclosed is the one that matters later.
Carrying passengers, and why the rideshare question confuses people
Proposals frequently ask whether the vehicle is used to carry passengers for payment. People engaged in support work read this as a question about rideshare and answer no, reasoning that they are not driving strangers for fares.
The safer approach is to describe the actual activity to the insurer rather than to interpret the category: who is carried, how often, and whether the driving is part of paid work. An insurer that has been told plainly can decide how to rate it. An insurer that has not been told is deciding later, when a claim is in front of it.
The duty that sits behind all of this
Australian insurance law places a duty on the person taking out cover to tell the insurer what it needs to know to decide whether to insure and on what terms. Getting a proposal question wrong is not a technicality; it goes to the contract.
The practical consequence is that a policy which looked adequate can respond differently than expected, and the person finds out at the worst moment.
Driving a car that belongs to the client
When a worker drives a participant’s or a client’s vehicle at their request, the vehicle’s own policy is the starting point, and whether it covers other drivers, and on what terms, is set out there.
Who ultimately bears an excess is a question of that policy and of the agreement between the parties, not something insurance answers by itself. Threads on this produce two confident opposite answers precisely because it depends on documents nobody in the thread has read.
Settling it in writing before it happens costs nothing. Settling it afterwards is a dispute.
Equipment and property in the car
A motor policy covers the vehicle and liability for damage it causes. Tools, equipment and goods belonging to somebody else are commonly limited to a small amount or excluded, and are the subject of separate classes of cover.
For mobile workers carrying assessment equipment or client property, that gap is worth knowing about before it is tested.
- [Commercial motor insurance](/insurance/commercial-motor)
- [Tools of trade insurance](/insurance/tools-cover)
- [Goods in transit insurance](/insurance/goods-in-transit)
Questions
- I am an employee, not a business owner. Does business use apply to me?
- Business use describes what the vehicle is doing, not who owns the business. Using a private car to visit or transport clients as part of paid work is a use worth describing to the insurer plainly rather than deciding for yourself which box it fits.
- Does transporting a client count as carrying passengers for reward?
- Rather than interpreting the category, describe the activity: who you carry, how often, and whether the driving is part of paid work. The insurer decides how to rate it, and you have a record that you disclosed it.
- Who pays the excess if I crash a client’s car?
- That depends on the policy covering that vehicle and on the agreement between you and the owner. Insurance does not allocate it by itself, and the two documents are the only place the answer exists. Agreeing it in writing beforehand is the practical step.
Sources
- Moneysmart (ASIC) — General guidance on business insurance from the regulator’s consumer site.
- Insurance Contracts Act 1984 (Cth) — Federal Register of Legislation — The statute governing insurance contracts in Australia, including the duty owed when taking out cover.