In the car industry, it used to be clear when you bought a VW it was made by VW and the same for other cars such as SEAT, Audi and Mini’s. Nowadays though, many different car brands are owned by the same parents and they share technology. So your Audi A4 estate has many of the same parts as your mates VW Touran. This is no bad thing as, through survival of the fittest, the best car companies buy up and merge with others and share technology.

This analogy, believe it or not, fits with the business insurance industry. We had an enquiry the other day for a customer looking for a commercial combined insurance quote. They had a policy that said commercial combined at the top with a lot of correspondence from their broker. We were dealing over the phone and asked them who they were insured with. This is where we hit a snag. We like to know who a company is insured with as it helps us understand the product they have and also stops us approaching that same company for a quote.

it is not a requirement of insurance that you know who is insuring you, but it does help. As it happens the company was insured with a managing general agent, with capacity provided by a panel of three authorised insurers. Providing capacity means underwriting, or taking on, the risk.

The best, and usually easiest, way to find out which insurer is actually covering you is to look at your certificate of employers liability. These single sheets are very simple, clear and understandable and usually (although they do not have to be) displayed on your wall. Have a look at your EL cert and all will become clear.

The largest insurance consolidator, Towergate, announced last week that it was entering into a formal consultation process with staff at Broker Network Insurance Brokers. There are 16 offices of BNIB currently and there is a possibility that this number will be slashed to 3, with the brand disappearing.

BNIB were one of the many Towergate purchases in the past five years, dealing in both personal and business insurance.

What does this mean for the average businesses, either those that are insured through BNIB or are approached by BNIB to provide them with a business insurance quote? The answer is, very little. Any business that acquires so many different ventures that may, or may not, operate in close proximity to each other are going to have to face the potential of office closures.

When we go through the worst recession that UK plc has seen since before the second world war and invest income is plummeting, then we have reached a perfect storm for the insurance world.

Hopefully, the consultation will see all staff retained in different locations but the omens do not look good. For those insured through BNIB there is inevitably going to be disruption as staff members change and physical office locations alter.

Benjamin Franklin’s most famous quote is that “in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes”.

Insurance is the same as everything else and yes, you do pay tax on it in the UK. The tax is known as insurance premium tax. There is a double whammy of bad news about IPT.

Firstly, that you have to actually the tax and secondly that unlike VAT you cannot claim it back. You do not apply IPT to the products you sell (like VAT) so this is a no go. Insurance brokers have to apply the tax and collect it. This then goes to the insurers who pay this money to Mr A Darling to do with it what he wants.

Whenever you get a business insurance quote or renewal confirmed, the IPT amount should be clearly stated. You will pay 0% ipt on, for example, marine cargo insurance outside of the UK and on engineering inspection cover (because this is subject to VAT).

It is just a cost we have to live with and pay.

Enquiries have been increasing, as far as Businessinsure is concerned for pub insurance quotes. In fact, all types of licensed trade insurance enquiries are increasing.

We used to receive significant enquiries for both new venture pubs (including taking over existing businesses) and also existing pubs looking for alternative quotes. Since the credit crunch, the licensed trade has been hit badly and the number of new pubs opening is less than 10% of the rate during the early to mid 2007 period.

So, the increased numbers of enquiries are due to existing licensed trade businesses looking around for alternatives. As always, we do like to analyse the reasons why this is happening. Having spoken to a few customers we have noticed that some of the larger insurers, in particular Aviva (a.k.a. Norwich Union) are declining to quote at renewal or applying terms designed to force the customer away.

One such category that Aviva do not appear to want are thatched premises. Yes they represent an increased fire risk but are they un insurable? No is the answer.

We can either quote a package policy including the buildings or provide a quote for the trading risk and then a separate one for the commercial building insurance.

Whatever your existing broker may say about the “insurability” of your business, give us a call to see what we can do.

Warehouse insurance policies have different sections, as you would expect. Apart from the employees, the most valuable asset of any warehouse business is the stock that it holds.

Commercial combined insurance is what you need to protect this stock, but you need to make sure that you have the widest cover possible. Insurance is all about unexpected events, you cannot insure for somethign you know is going to happen.

The key with the insurance cover is to make sure that you get the correct cover for as many different eventualities as possible. Your insurance broker will talk about “insured perils”. The perils that your business may face that can be insured. One of these is impact. Everyone knows that someone driving into your building, or car or stock shoudl be covered, because they are a third party lelally liable for damage. But, some policies do not include impact from your own vehicles.

Have a look at this CCTV film from the BBC and decide whether your business insurance would cover you or not?

You shouldn’t believe all that you read in newspapers, everyone knows this. A step further from this is when papers are reporting doom and gloom is just to not read them at all. This used to be easy when I started out my working life as a naive teenager working in London, I couldn’t even afford the Evening Standard (which is now to be free – 25 years late).

It is not so easy now, all you need is Google or Yahoo as your preferred search engine and the news is not far away. In your daily surf you can’t help but have a sneaky peak at the business news. We seem, in the UK, to have lurched from the serious deepest, darkest depths of the recession when things were, without a shadow of a doubt, bad to having some good business news stories in the summer to somewhere in between now.

I am not saying that the recession is over, but there have been signs that the unbelievably large amounts of money that have been drip fed into the economy are starting to take hold. Forgetting politics, this is what any sensible government would have done because every economist has to study the 1929 crash at some point. Politicians do not want to go back there and thankfully, we are not going to.

The problem seems to be that because there is an election due (haven’t you heard?) soon, the press don’t know whether to report good or bad business news depending on their political allegiances.

The news yesterday about the two British banks that actually kept their heads making increased profits is a good thing. Yes, it is nasty banks making billions, but this is what the economy needs. Big business making money (and paying tax) and the feel good factor may just return.

We need the entrepreneurial spirit to grow and grow in the UK, we are in danger of scaring anyone who wants to take that greatest step of all, to start their own business. Great businesses always have a figurehead, many of them we know have a bit of family support (money) allowing them to venture more than once. But, they need that business brain at top to guide them forwards.

Lets not forget that UK plc has some fantastic businesses that have suffered in these difficult times. We need these businesses to survive and we need more to take the place of the ones that have fallen by the wayside.

If you are an entrepreneur, keep going and if you need protection, give us a call for a business insurance quote.

You shouldn’t believe all that you read in newspapers, everyone knows this. A step further from this is when papers are reporting doom and gloom is just to not read them at all. This used to be easy when I started out my working life as a naive teenager working in London, I couldn’t even afford the Evening Standard (which is now to be free – 25 years late).

It is not so easy now, all you need is Google or Yahoo as your preferred search engine and the news is not far away. In your daily surf you can’t help but have a sneaky peak at the business news. We seem, in the UK, to have lurched from the serious deepest, darkest depths of the recession when things were, without a shadow of a doubt, bad to having some good business news stories in the summer to somewhere in between now.

I am not saying that the recession is over, but there have been signs that the unbelievably large amounts of money that have been drip fed into the economy are starting to take hold. Forgetting politics, this is what any sensible government would have done because every economist has to study the 1929 crash at some point. Politicians do not want to go back there and thankfully, we are not going to.

The problem seems to be that because there is an election due (haven’t you heard?) soon, the press don’t know whether to report good or bad business news depending on their political allegiances.

The news yesterday about the two British banks that actually kept their heads making increased profits is a good thing. Yes, it is nasty banks making billions, but this is what the economy needs. Big business making money (and paying tax) and the feel good factor may just return.

We need the entrepreneurial spirit to grow and grow in the UK, we are in danger of scaring anyone who wants to take that greatest step of all, to start their own business. Great businesses always have a figurehead, many of them we know have a bit of family support (money) allowing them to venture more than once. But, they need that business brain at top to guide them forwards.

Lets not forget that UK plc has some fantastic businesses that have suffered in these difficult times. We need these businesses to survive and we need more to take the place of the ones that have fallen by the wayside.

If you are an entrepreneur, keep going and if you need protection, give us a call for a business insurance quote.

In England and Wales, the majority of flats are sold on a leasehold basis. Although the owner of the flat may have a mortgage or have paid cash for the “bricks and mortar” they are still leasing the land the property sits on.

The owner of the individual flat will, in the vast majority of cases, need to arrange insurance for their flat. This is a usual term of the mortgage company who are looking to insure their asset (ie something against which they have lent money).

Where there are a number of flats in a block, then a policy can be bought for the whole building, commonly called a block of flats insurance package. One of the biggest causes of claims with these policies is water leakage from flat A into flat B into flat C etc.

Because of this, some insurers are not keen to underwrite flats. Others however have bespoke policies for this. These policies (ie one for all flats) are better because there is no option of insurer a or insurer b arguing the case as to who is responsible.

For more than one building or block, you will probably need a commercial property insurance portfolio product.

We are an independent business insurance broker, we choose which insurance companies we would like agencies with and we choose which of their products to sell to our customers. We decide based on the simple doctrine of treating the customer fairly, As a result, we offer the best product we can for the best price.

A lot of insurers, well, every single one, have spent some time in the past 10 or 15 years chasing growth. To chase growth they offer cheaper premiums.

The problem with insurers is that they do not notice what an effect this has on the margins until many years down the line, when the losses come in. So, to cover their losses they think they can write more business, invest this premium, and still make money.

And, to be fair, this works most of the time. Insurance runs in cycles, usually between 7 and 10 years. The premiums get cheaper, cheaper, cheaper until the breaking point comes when insurers have to start increasing their premiums because business survival is at stake. The last time we saw this was around the end of 2001 and early 2002. The cycle is now coming to an end and some insurers are trying to push for increases to premiums.

The key word is that “some insurers” are trying. Others are still on the, lets get more business in the books point and others are actually still making money. The ones that are still making money have been following the “slowly, slowly, catchy monkey” process. They haven’t spent the last 8 years aggressively chasing volume, but doing this a bit more carefully, skillfully and profitably.

This is where you see another benefits of dealing with an independent business insurance. We can decide, if company A are charging too much for their renewal, to move you to company B. If you go direct or through a comparison site, you may not have the option of an alternative and have to go through the whole “get a quote” process again.

Use a broker and you don’t have to worry about this every again.

Those of us in the UK who are old enough, may remember the arrival of the red telephone from DirectLine. The company started in 1986 with less than 10 staff. They have spawned many, many competitors. Things have moved on now and the internet has, unsurprisingly, taken over. If you need a car insurance quote you will go online. But, did you know that increasing numbers of people are getting their quotes online and then giving a broker a call and saying if you can match the price you can have the business, because they want the personal service.

There are a number of websites appearing which offer you the ability to compare business insurance quotes. We have a real problem with these sites because they are not offering a true comparison. The comparison is only based on the questions they ask and the information you choose to provide.

Commercial insurance is not very complex (whatever my first boss tried to make me believe all those years ago), but you do need a person to go through a “sanity check” on the information you provide. How do you know whether you are giving the correct figures, do you declare your current stock holding or your maximum, do you declare your building re-instatement cost or the market value? These are the sorts of points you do need to discuss with a broker who understands your requirements.

The Financial Services Authority says that a quote can only be provided based on your “demands and needs”. The only way, we believe, you can get a true understanding of your insurance requirements is to speak to someone.