If you have any business insurance policy, which includes employers liability, you may find that you have been requested to provide certain information by your insurer and/or broker.
The information that is required, is your PAYE reference number. Many years ago, you used to have a bright yellow booklet, almost like a cheque book. Each month, if you participated in PAYE, you sent a cheque to the Inland Revenue for your contribution to PAYE. You do still get these issued in come cases, but most payments now are done online. On this booklet, or in your online account, you will have a business specific reference number. This is usually three digits, followed by a / then any number of digits and numbers, up to 7 or sometimes 8 in total.
This is the number you are required to provide, usually to your business insurance broker, in the first instance. From the 1st April 2012, this is something that you either must provide, or confirm you are exempt, before your employers liability insurance is renewed, or incepted as a new policy. The question is, is this a legal requirement, or another one of the industries nice to haves?
It is no a legal requirement, but you do have to provide it. What this means is that it is the insurers that have signed up to be members of the Employers Liability Tracing Office. If your insurer has not signed up to this, they can still offer the cover, and you do not have to provide the reference number. But, it is thought to be very, very unlikely that come the 1st April any commercial insurance companies that offer EL cover will not be requesting this information.
You do not need to worry though. With a limited company, we can find out a lot of information from companies house and other websites that offer details about registered companies. But, there is no such way of finding information on partnerships, sole traders, charities and other organisations that may employ people. All the industry is trying to do is build up a database of information so that, in years to come, if you need to trace who your employers liability insurance company where, at any given moment in the past. It is to be used confidentially, insurers will not share this information and will only use it for the purpose it is intended, to protect employees, or ex employees, that have suffered an injury, illness or diseases that should be covered under a standard employers liability policy.