The short version

CoHub does not insure you, your space, or your guests. There is no platform cover sitting behind a booking, and no CoHub policy that responds if something goes wrong. You need your own public liability insurance, and it has to permit the kind of short-term use a booking involves.

That is not a disclaimer buried in an agreement — it is the single most important thing to sort out before your first booking, and it is worth a ten-minute phone call to whoever arranged your current policy.

The one question to ask your broker

Most of it comes down to a single question, and it is worth asking in these words:

I want to let other businesses use my meeting room for a few hours at a time, for a fee, through an online marketplace. Does my public liability policy cover that, or does it exclude short-term third-party or commercial use of the premises?

Ask for the answer in writing. Many small-business policies are written on the assumption that the only people on your premises are your staff and your own clients, and paid third-party use can sit outside that. Some insurers will cover it as-is, some will add an endorsement, and some will decline — all three are normal answers, and you want the real one before a stranger is standing in your boardroom.

While you have them on the phone, two more worth asking: whether your contents cover still applies when a guest is on site, and whether letting the space affects anything else on the policy.

What CoHub requires

When you list, you declare that you hold public liability insurance at or above CoHub’s minimum for that category. The minimums are set out in full in Section 9 of the Trust & Safety Policy. For the categories most hosts start with — a desk, an office or a meeting room — that minimum is $10 million. Retail and warehouse space carry higher minimums and may need products liability cover as well, because the risks are different.

These are CoHub’s platform minimums. They are not an actuarial judgement about your particular premises, and meeting the minimum is not the same as being adequately covered for what you actually do.

Two things that are not insurance, and are often mistaken for it

  • The Insurance Verified badge. It records that a CoHub admin sighted a document you supplied, on the date shown, and it expires after twelve months. It is not a statement that your cover is current, adequate, or right for any particular booking. It is voluntary, and you can host without it.
  • Approving each booking. Bookings come to you as requests to confirm or decline unless you switch Instant Book on, and you see who is asking before you decide. That is real control over who comes in, and it is worth having — but it is judgement, not cover. CoHub does not ID-check or background-check members.

Your lease, and your strata by-laws

Separate from insurance, and just as capable of stopping you: you have to actually be allowed to do this. A CoHub booking is a licence for a few hours, not a lease — it grants no exclusive possession and creates no landlord-and-tenant relationship (Host Licence Agreement, Section 2). That is a genuinely different thing from subletting, and worth saying to a landlord who assumes otherwise.

But the agreement also requires you to hold every right you need — under your lease, any strata by-law, your mortgage, and any council approval that applies. If you rent your premises, ask your landlord or managing agent before you list. Some will have no issue and some will say no, and finding out afterwards is the bad version.

If the answer turns out to be no

Then it is no, and that is a perfectly good outcome. If your policy excludes it, your lease forbids it, or the room you had in mind is where client files and screens live, listing it anyway would be a bad idea for you and for whoever books it. CoHub would rather have fewer listings than one that should not have been there.

One thing we are not

CoHub is a marketplace, not an insurance broker, and nothing on this page is insurance or legal advice. We cannot tell you whether your policy covers you — only your insurer or broker can, and only about your actual policy. What this page is for is making sure you ask them, and know what to ask.

If something here does not match what your broker tells you, trust the broker and tell us — we would rather fix the page.