The Insurance Questions Security Operators Forget to Ask

Your two biggest tools can be your two biggest exposures

Ask a mobile patrol operator what makes their service valuable and the answer is usually speed and presence: a marked vehicle covering ground, sometimes with a trained dog alongside. Both are legitimate, professional tools of the trade. Both also change your risk profile in ways that standard business insurance does not automatically pick up. If your operation uses K9 units or patrol vehicles, this one is for you.

K9 operations: declared or dangerous

A trained security dog is a deterrent precisely because it is capable of causing harm. From an insurance perspective, that capability is the whole issue.

The exposure scenarios are easy to picture:

• A dog bites a person who turns out to be lawfully on the premises, such as an employee working late, a cleaner or a tradesperson. That is a public liability claim, and dog bite injuries can be serious.
• A dog reacts to a member of the public at an event or during a handover outside the site boundary.
• A dog escapes a vehicle or enclosure and injures someone or causes a traffic incident.
• The person bitten was an intruder, but sues anyway, arguing the response was disproportionate. Defending that allegation still costs money.

Here is the part operators miss: liability arising from animals is not automatically included in every policy, and insurers price and accept K9 risk specifically. If your public liability policy was arranged without the insurer knowing you run dogs, you may be carrying a serious undeclared exposure. Handler licensing and dog registration requirements also vary between states and territories, and non-compliance with those requirements can complicate a claim. Declare the dogs, name the activity, and confirm in writing that your policy covers K9 operations.

Patrol vehicles: where motor insurance ends and liability begins

Vehicles create a different trap, because operators assume “the car insurance covers it”. Sometimes it does. Often the claim falls between two policies.

Work through the scenarios:

• Your patrol vehicle collides with another car on the way between sites. That is a motor claim, but only if the vehicle is insured for business use. Private-use motor policies can decline claims arising from commercial patrol work.
• Your guard leaves the vehicle and knocks over a client’s gate, bollard or stock while on foot patrol. That is public liability, not motor.
• A guard directing traffic or managing a car park waves a vehicle into a collision. Depending on the facts, this can land as a public liability claim against your business.
• Your employee is injured in a vehicle accident while on shift, which raises workers compensation questions, or personal accident cover if the driver is a subcontractor.

The fix is not complicated, but it does need to be deliberate: commercial motor cover for every vehicle used on patrol, business use declared, drivers listed correctly, and a public liability policy that declares mobile patrol and traffic control activities where you perform them.

Cash, keys and client property in the vehicle

Patrol vehicles often carry client keys, access cards, alarm codes and occasionally cash. A stolen patrol vehicle can mean re-keying an entire client site, and the client will expect someone to pay for it. Ask your broker how your policy treats loss of keys and client property in your custody, because this is a known claim type in patrol work and cover for it is not universal.

A ten minute conversation now beats a dispute later

Every exposure in this article is manageable. The claims that hurt are the ones where the activity was real but the policy never knew about it. If you have added dogs, vehicles, traffic control or cash handling since your cover was last arranged, your policy needs to catch up with your business.

Talk to Guardsafe about your patrol operation

Guardsafe are specialist insurance brokers for the Australian security industry, and we arrange cover for mobile patrol operators, K9 handlers and cash-in-transit businesses week in, week out. Call 1300 880 320 or contact us here and tell us how your operation actually runs, and we will make sure your cover matches it.