September « 2010 « BusinessInsure Blog

Archive for September, 2010

Getting the correct commercial insurance policy

Friday, September 17th, 2010

Anyone in business will know the importance of having a valid, current business insurance policy in force. But, there is a slight difficulty when looking around as there is so much choice.

No-one wants to over insure, and pay for cover they do not need, whereas on the other hand, you do not want to face yourself with a loss that is not covered. Another issue that we face in this day and age, is that we are being trained in the UK to search and search for the cheaper option. There are numerous “helpful” websites telling us that we should never pay the full price for anything, if you look long and hard enough you will save money.

This of course is true, no-one goes shopping for clothes, walks in the first shop they come to and buys everything they need. Most people will go to a few different shops, check out the different styles, materials and price. Then they will make their choice.

But what happens when you look around for your commercial insurance for alternative quotes. You may have four or five competing quotes, all at around the same price but which one to choose? The quality of an insurance policy is of course in the service you receive in the event of a claim. Otherwise, why would you buy the policy in the first place.

If you go on the net and do not speak to anyone, there really is no way of knowing what is the difference between policy a, b or c. But, if you deal with a business insurance broker, and they have given you the quotes, they are obliged to tell you if there are any major differences between each of the quote. You can also ask them which one they would be happy to recommend, in writing.

This way, going through a broker clears the fog for you, you have an expert, on hand, to advise you on the intricacies of each of the different quotes.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker, commercial insurance | Comments Off

Unoccupied building insurance – is this a business policy?

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

We received a call from an existing customer who is renovating a house and living in a mobile home on-site. Their home insurers are refusing to extend cover as the property is, under their definitions, unoccupied. They have advised the customer to get a business insurance policy.

The question from the customer is, why is this a business policy? You would think, that a business policy would be only one available to live, trading businesses. However, nothing is of course that easy.

You can get business policies for charities, non-trading companies, dormant companies and of course, residential and commercial property insurance. So, the unoccupied property, that is not a business, is not earning income, is probably a complete drain on resources, is not one that a traditional house insurer will cover.

What you need to do, is to speak to a business insurance broker. They will have access to a huge range of property owners policies, many of which will cover unoccupied, vacant or untenanted properties. It does not matter whether these are residential or commercial, they will be able to get the right policy for you. The only difference, that will affect the premium and cover considerably, is whether there is just general “tidying up” renovation, ie painting, decorating, new kitchen/bathroom etc, or whether you are being more ambitious and structural changes are undertaken. This would include new windows, extensions, conversions and new roofs.

This is when the insurers may restrict the cover to simply, fire, lightning, aircraft and explosion. If you are not doing structural work, you can get cover for storm, burst pipes and/or theft and malicious damage.

Posted in business insurance, commercial property insurance, commercial property insurance quote, commercial property owners insurance, unoccupied building insurance, unoccupied commercial building insurance | Comments Off

Business insurance money cover, including assault

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

If you have a commercial insurance package policy, the chances are that there are sections of cover which are included as standard. Most policies are based on a few main factors, such as type of trade, location, sums insured for contents, stock and buildings and the overall security and construction.

In addition to these figures that you decalre, you’ll find that there are items you didn’t necessarily ask for, but you probabably need. These include money cover, legal expenses, business interruption, glass cover and goods in transit.

One section of cover that is not normally included is personal accident. This is where one of the key employees is injured, either in or out of work, and cannot work. Say, a chef who suffers a broken leg. You want that person to work, but they cannot for a few weeks at least. The personal accident pays a weekly amount which should enable you to get in a temporary replacement so the business can continue to trade.

Many people though, when they sit down and read through their policy, will see an item for “personal accident and assault” and think they are covered. If this section is next to, or part of the money cover, then it only applies to employees suffering accident or assault whilst carrying money to, or from, the bank.

The chef we mentioned above may break his leg slipping over in their back garden, this is covered under personal accident, whereas personal accident and assault would not pick this cover up.

It is not meant to be deliberately confusing, it is just the way that all business insurance companies in the UK put their policy wordings together. What you need to do is consider which of your employees you really could not do without. This does not mean that some employees are not as good, but say in a restaurant, the chef is important whereas waiting staff could be drafted in from other parts of the business if necessary.

Once you have decided on the two or three key individuals, speak to your broker and see what they can do to add this cover to your policy or to quote you a separate policy, that purely covers personal accident. You can also extend these, at a cost, to include sickness as well. They usually have an excess, where they do not pay for the first few days but when you have a key employee that could be off for a month or two, it is money well spent.

Posted in business insurance, business personal accident, commercial insurance | Comments Off

Restaurant insurance quote – which insurer should you choose?

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

If you are looking for a restaurant insurance quote in 2010 you will find yourself absolutely bombarded with choice. Gone are they days when you have to search and search for hours. If you have been in business for a number of years, you may remember having to look up a certain yellow directory and spend hours on the phone.

Nowadays, though you can, within about two minutes flat, log on and find yourself a huge list of potential people to speak to about what you need. But, it may seem difficult to understand exactly who you should choose your business insurance from.

Ultimately, insurance is provided by an insurer or a Lloyds Underwriter. To get to these businesses though, you need to either go direct or to an intermediary. Intermediaries come in all shapes and sizes. They are either independent or they are almost tied agents, ie they can only quote you for one insurer. These tied agents are almost qausi-direct to insurers.

So, when you get your restaurant insurance quote, you need to work out who the ultimate insurer actually is. It may be difficult to tell from the quote, even though a broker is legally obliged to notify you in the quote who the insurers actually are.

If it is a company that you have never heard of, you do not need to worry. There are so may different insurers in so many different guises, that the old traditional brand names that you may have been used to, do not exist any more. Ask the broker to confirm in writing if they are happy to recommend the particular insurer, if they are then feel free to proceed with cover.

Posted in business insurance, restaurant insurance, takeaway insurance quote | Comments Off

Hairdressers salon insurance – work away

Monday, September 13th, 2010

If you have a salon insurance policy in place, you are likely to have cover in place for public liability. Most policies include this as a standard part of their cover.

Public liability insurance is exactly as it suggests, it provides financial cover for you, the insured, for any legal liability you may have for injury, illness, disease or damage to people or property. So, if someone comes into the salon and slips on some spilled shampoo, they can claim that you were negligent because you should have reasonably foreseen this would happen and should have cleared it up.

Interestingly, if you spilled the shampoo and then less than a split second later someone slipped, you are still likely to found liable.

But what happens if one of the services you provide involves working at someone else location? Many hairdressers and salons are offering as many different services as possible. Partly, this is to help the business grow and partly, it is a business survival issue. Many businesses are doing all they can to expand their range of products and services. For hairdressers, salons or beauty salons, there is the chance that you will be offering a full wedding package which can include visits to the brides home.

Whether you like it or not, there is always a chance that there could be damage caused by you. Chances are of course slim, but a bit of bleach on a bit of carpet can me more than a bit of a few thousand pounds.

If you do have the entrepreneurial spirit and are offering a wide range of services, please make sure that broker and/or insurer are aware. A business insurance policy is designed to be flexible, but insurers need to be kept in the loop at all times.

Posted in business insurance, hairdressers insurance, salon insurance | Comments Off

Unoccupied building insurance cost

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

We, as an independent business insurance broker, arrange insurance cover for every type of business you can imagine. If it is something we cannot do, we will usually point you in the direction of someone that can help.

As well as providing quotes and arranging cover, people phone us for advice and we always provide this for free. One, unfortunate, growth area in the past few years, has been in the number of unoccupied properties. We have heard in the UK news channels this morning, that the number of empty shops is reducing (at last). But, they stil estimate that 1 in 7 retail outlets are un-let.

Therefore, the requirement for unoccupied building insurance has increased dramatically. The advice people phone us for is usually, how much will this cost.

What we are going to say in this blog, is advice only, whilst we are more than happy to discuss each individual quote, this is just our indication of the current market conditions in September 2010.

Firstly, you need to know the rebuilding cost. Not the purchase price, but the actual cost to rebuild your property if it were burned to the ground and you had to start again.

Then, you take this figure, for example £300,000 and multiply this by 0.25% and then add the current rate of insurance premium tax, of 5%. So, you are going to pay a minimum of £787.50 per year to cover your building.

As soon as it is let, the price will go down, depending on the occupation. The types of occupant that make the rate higher are woodworkers, fast food and high risk manufacture (ie plastics).

But, if you are letting the property then the chances are the tenant is responsible for the insurance cost anyway.

Posted in business insurance, unoccupied building insurance, unoccupied commercial building insurance | Comments Off

Small business insurance – getting a small quote

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Speak to any business insurance broker or insurer and ask them to define a small business and we can guarantee two things. One, is that most will not have any way of differentiating between large, medium and small and two, is that this that have definitions, they will differ.

One insurer we deal with classifies small business as any venture that has a financial turnover (annual) of less than £2,000,000. Now, having set up and run small businesses in the past, £2m turnover is fantastic and if I have achieved that in some businesses, I would have been over the moon. But, that is just one definition from one insurer. Others classify small businesses as those with less than a set number of employees, usually between 5 and 10. This is more like it, a small business to me is one that has less than double figure employees.

But, how do you go about getting a specialist small business insurance quote? You do not want a policy that is designed purely for the larger business and this is just scaled down for you. How do you know that you are getting the absolute best deal and the best price. By their very nature small businesses tend to be younger, newer ones and they are more susceptible to hits against their revenue. The more they can save in the first few years, the more stronger they will emerge.

If you can, speak to an independent business insurance broker. Independent is the key phrase here. This means they can go to whatever insurers they choose to get you the best deal. If they are not independent, your choice is severely limited, as will be the price range for the policy they recommend to you.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker, small business insurance quote | Comments Off

Pub insurance – non business contents

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

We were contacted recently by a buying group looking to develop a pub insurance facility for their licensed trade membership. Discussion have gone well and hopefully we can offer something fairly soon which will help mitigate the difficulties the licensed trade industry is facing.

It was surprising to see that they had spoken to 22 insurers or brokers, as lay men, and asked if cover could be provided for the non-business contents at the premises. Of the 22 companies, they said that 12 would not provide any cover for personal effects, 7 would provide cover but not for any items taken away from the domestic quarters (ie glasses, sports equipment etc) and this left three that could provide proper personal effects cover.

Many business insurance policies are designed purely to cover the business liabilities, assets and contents. As soon as you start to talk about personal contents, that the business does not have a financial interest in, the policies are not suitable.

This can prove very difficult given that, after conducting a straw poll here, over 50% of the public houses we arrange insurance for have the owners or managers living on or above the premises.

Don’t whatever you do arrange a separate policy, this can be a very expensive option. Speak to your business insurance broker and get them to go to one of the companies that actually provides you with the cover you need.

Posted in business insurance broker, pub insurance | Comments Off

Landlords insurance – multiple properties

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Whilst it is an old fashioned definition, many insurers still refer to policies for property owners as landlords insurance.

In this modern day and age, the term is stil used as people understand what it means and represents. However, you may find if you are looking for a policy that you need to consider exactly what the risk represents. In recent years, pre 2007 of course, buy to let insurance was all the range. Certain builidng societies decided that borrowing money from the markets and throwing it at any Tom, Dick or Harry that wanted a second property was a good idea. We all know what happened though.

Nowadays though the landlord has been replaced by the non-gender specific commercial, or residential property owner. If you are looking for cover for more than one property, you have a couple of choices.

Firstly, you can look around for a separate policy for each and every property. There are few benefits to doing this, you have different renewal dates, there are usually no economies of scale discounts avaialble from insurers.

Secondly, and a better option if you have many properties, is to get one, block policy. This way, you have one renewal date, you can spread the premium across the year and know exactly what you are spending and also insurers will reflect in their pricing the fact that you have chosen to insure mutliple risks with them.

If you need a quote, speak to an independent business insurance broker and let them do all the work for you.

Posted in business insurance, landlord insurance, landlords insurance | Comments Off

Shop insurance – who covers your roller shutters?

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

Roller shutters are everywhere. It used to be that you only needed roller shutters if you were a city centre business. Nowadays though, it does not matter which city or town you go to, a good proportion of high street properties will have this form of protection.

They are not usually a requirement of any business insurance quote or policy you take out. If we declare to an insurer that a business has roller shutters it is considered as a good underwriting feature, instead of a factor whihc can allow a discount.

Apart from the actual type of business and the location, the other two factors that affect the theft element of any cover, are the intruder alarm and locks. This is where an insurer may choose to insist on a certain security level, prior to providing, for example, theft cover.

But, you may install the roller shutter yourself and a good quality electric shutter for a even a 1,000 square foot shop can set you back a few thousand pounds. So, should this be on your shop insurance policy? Or the policy for the landlord or owner of the building?

Technically, you need to insure it under your policy. You as the shop owner have the financial interest, as you own and have paid for the shutter. Speak to your business insurance broker about getting this added to your policy. It is not a “content” or “fixture or fitting”, it must be insured as a tenants improvement.

Posted in business insurance, shop insurance | No Comments »