Archive for January, 2011

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Wholesalers insurance – monthly stock declarations

Monday, January 31st, 2011

There are very few businesses in the UK that carry the same levels of stock throughout the year. Many will tend to increase their stock levels as we approach the traditional busy Christmas period. For some retailers, it is estimated that between 30-50% of their trading turnover is made in November and December.

This has a significant affect on any wholesalers insurance policy that there may be in force. We have talked before about the need to insure for the correct levels of stock. As well as ensuring that you have the correct levels of cover for your stock, you can also make sure that you are only paying for the cover you need.

What do you do from January to June when you sell most of your stock in the latter part of the year? The first thing is to make sure that you have a business insurance broker that actually understands exactly what you do and that you have wildly fluctuating levels of stock.

If this is the case, then you need to be able to notify your broker as and when the stock levels go up or down. There are formal commercial insurance policies for this, where you complete a formal declaration on a monthly basis and at the year end your insurance is adjusted accordingly. The slight issue with these policies is that most insurers only allow these for bigger companies. Typically those with turnovers in excess of £5,000,000. However, if you have the broker that understands what you do, they can agree to get insurers to amend the stock sums insured either monthly, quarterly or for any other period you think would be beneficial.

The key thing of course is to make sure that you have a broker that does not charge you an administration charge for every single transaction.

Posted in commercial insurance, wholesalers insurance, wholesalers insurance quote | Comments Off

Restaurant insurance – how much does it cost

Sunday, January 30th, 2011

Had another phone call the other day, recommended by a an existing customer, with the question posed, “I am thinking of starting up a new business, how much will I pay for restaurant insurance“. Now, many years ago this is the sort of phone call that would result in effectively a bland response because there were not that many insurers involved in that area, so we could not give much information.

Nowadays though, being a bit older and marginally wiser, I understand that people will want to know that their potential outlays are likely to be. All we can possibly do is give an indication. We work in a very restrictive industry, thanks to the governments input, and that we cannot give a verbal quote without following this up in writing. Without any information, we cannot give a quote, just an idea.

Which is exactly what this person wanted. All we really need to know is the rough area, how much their contents were going to cost, what the business is going to do (ie any takeaway or outside catering) and the claims experience of the owner.

This way, we can safely say that any restaurant in a reasonable area, with around £25k contents is going to pay approximately £500-£600 per annum, or £50 per month. That is all they needed to know to then move onto stage 2 of their business plane.

If you are looking to get an indicative premium for your business insurance, please feel free to call us. We won’t hold you to anything, but will give you and idea of what you should or could be paying.

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

Insuring a commercial building you do not own.

Saturday, January 29th, 2011

One of the first things you learn when you embark on a career in the business insurance world is insurable interest. You should not be able to insure anything which does not belong to you, or you do not have a financial in. The scenario we use is that you do not insure your next door neighbours car or house. If it is stolen or damaged by a fire, even if you took out a policy on it, the insurers would of course ask you to prove ownership.

But, there are circumstances where you can, if you wish, insure something that does not belong to you. In business, this is likely to happen in two main situations. If you are leasing or renting equipment (say a photocopier) then the leasing company want you to insure it, if it is destroyed in a fire, then they want to be able to get their money back.

The other one is where you, the tenant, are asked to arrange a commercial building insurance policy for the property you are leasing. In over 90% of cases in England and Wales, anyone that leases a property, say a shop, will pay the landlord and amount, either annually or monthly, for the cover on the bricks and mortar. Unfortunately for some, the landlord does not always choose the most competitive policy, but your lease stipulates that you must pay it.

The other situation is where you have a full insuring and repairing lease. You need to arrange a commercial property insurance policy in your name but have the financial interest of the landlord noted on the policy. What this means is that if there is a fire, the landlord receives the settlement and crucially, if you decide to cancel the cover, the insurers will notify the financially interested party of this.

If you need to get a range of quotes for your insuring lease, give us a call today. We can even include cover for loss of rental income payable.

Posted in business buildings insurance, commercial building insurance, commercial buildings insurance | No Comments »

Getting a business insurance quote the easy way.

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Many years ago, if you wanted to get a business insurance quote, you had only one real option. You could not go direct to an insurer, you could not use the internet (as it did not exist in it’s current form) and you could not buy your policy over the phone as it was just not the done thing at the time.

Your option was to speak, either by going to see them or having them visit you, a broker. Even more restrictive, was that you had to deal with a local one. If you were based in London, and phoned a broker up in Edinburgh, they would think you had something to hide.

This process took absolutely ages, from initial visit to getting a quote and then maybe a policy. The length of time was usually nothing to do with the brokers, it was the insurers that were notoriously slow. A broker had to gather information from you and then submit that to insurers for quotes. In turn, they would provide a business insurance quote to the broker. Timescales varied, anything from the same day, on rare occasions to two or three weeks in some cases. For some commercial combined insurance policies, I remember customers not receiving their policy documents until their second year of cover!

Nowadays though, things are very, very different. With the advent of the internet and telesales, you can phone a broker up anywhere in country and they will be able to give you a quote. No more do insurers question “out of area” quotes, they understand (in the main) that people choose the internet as their preferred method of gaining a quote and it is immaterial to them where the person is based. A small caveat needs to be added though, overseas call centres do not go down well in the UK.

If you are looking for a quote and as we say, you want to do it the easy way, then you just need to give us a call. If we cannot help you, we will always try and help you find a company that can help.

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

The benefits of using a business insurance broker.

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

Over the last ten or fifteen years in the UK, we have been through a sea change with how you purchase products and services. This has been two fold. The internet has helped even the smallest of businesses get their products to an international market, very quickly. The second point is that we have had numerous business models extolling the virtues of cutting out the middle man.

This has affected many different area sof commerce in the UK, including business insurance. But, the question has to be asked, what benefit do we gain from using intermediaries to buy a product or a service? Those industries that wish you to buy direct, will always say that the middle man adds nothing except cost. However, in every walk of business life, we find intermediaries involved in every single business deal. There must be a reason for this and they must have a role to play.

Think of 2010 in the travel industry. We saw a great upheaval with the Icelandic volcanoes. We have had people saying for years and years that a travel agent adds nothing. But, when you book your own flights, your own hotel and your own car and your holiday is delayed because of a volcano, I am afraid to say that you will be wishing you used an approved agent.

It is the same with using a business insurance broker. Certain insurers felt that they could muscle in on what they thought was a lucrative market by tempting people to deal direct. They realised, over a few years, that there is a reason for us brokers being involved, we do have a role to play in sourcing the correct information from a client and then approaching a range of insurers.

This is the absolute crux of the matter, we give you choice. No-one wants to go back to the “good old days” when you had very little choice, but not many people find it easy to go through the numerous choices we have today.

This is where the benefits of using a business insurance broker are obvious.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker | Comments Off

Commercial buildings insurance – restaurants, cafes and fast food shops

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

If you are a commercial landlord, and you have a shop that is tenanted by any type of food establishment that involves cooking of food, then you need to consider very carefully the terms that apply your commercial buildings insurance policy wording.

When you take out a policy, you will be asked many different questions or have to complete and return a proposal form. One of the questions will be, how is the property tenanted? Depending on the answer to this, can have a great affect on the rating. A fish and chip shop presents a much higher risk than, for example a sweet shop. As a result, the business insurance company that provide the quote will adjust the price accordingly. This is fairly simple to understand and everyone accepts that if you are frying food, there is more likelihood of fire.

But, and this is the big part, you not only need to consider the price differential, it is the terms that apply. Fish and chip shops we know, have deep fat frying equipment, a fixed range is the usual. But, other types of takeaway can have a deep fat fryer that is fixed, movable (but is on the floor) or a table top “plug in” fryer. All of these represent a higher fire risk, but you business buildings insurance policy may state that you have to clean ducting, flues, chimneys or other parts of your building either monthly or 6 monthly.

Also, an insurer may give you a discount if they know there is no deep fat frying. But, is a table top, deep fat fryer, the same as a 4 feet deep industrial fryer? Probably not. Speak to your broker and find out a) whether you can allow deep fat frying and b) if you can, what the tenant has to do to comply with the policy. At the end of the day it is you who will be out of pocket.

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

Empty building insurance – specific conditions

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

This is a warning to anyone that has purchased or is looking to purchase an empty building insurance policy, to look very closely at the terms and conditions. Of course, any insurance policy taken out deserves some dedicated reading time, but certain policies need a bit more scrutiny.

When we are talking empty, we mean for more than 30 days. Most policies for your home (domestic) will provide some sort of cover for properties unoccupied up to 30, sometimes 45 or 60 days. But, for commercial insurance, it is slightly different. Many people will be buying a policy to protect a building that has been and is likely to remain empty for a number of months.

The two types of cover you get are:-

Basic – Fire, lightning, explosion, aircraft and property owners liability – more commonly called FLEA cover

Wider – The above, plus some restricted storm, theft and malicious damage.

As you would expect, the basic cover is cheaper but will contain the same conditions as the wider cover. We, as a business insurance broker, can look around and get some pretty cheap rates. But, and it is a big but, the cheaper the rate the higher the security requirements. We have one insurer that will provide quotes for almost any type of empty building, but they will insist on all ground floor windows being boarded up and doors having a certain type of lock on.

Now, if you are buying an unoccupied building that is already boarded, all well and good. But, if you need to board up, the cost can be many thousands of pounds. Then when you get the contractors to start work, they will ask you to remove all the boarding so they can get on with what they do.

As a broker, we are more than happy to quote this particular insurer (as well as others with different conditions) but we have to make the customer fully aware of the terms. That is our job and we know we do it well. If you are getting a quote from somewhere else, you really need to check what security they insist on you having in place.

Posted in commercial insurance, empty building insurance | Comments Off

Unoccupied building insurance – average costs?

Monday, January 24th, 2011

Unoccupied building insurance, whether for commercial, residential or mixed properties, has always been charged at a higher rate than most occupied policies.

Policies are based on a number of different factors. Depending on the insurer, they could be taking over 50 different rating factors into account. These range from the the potential flood risk of the area you are in, to the theft and malicious damage potential down to the risks presented by the actual occupation.

This is where the unoccupancy rates increase. If you have a building where people are regularly working or living, then the chances of malicious damage, or fire (arson) are significantly increased. You may not appreciate it, but there is a huge difference in the loss ratios (the amount and cost of claims) between empty properties and the rest.

As a business insurance broker, we have access to a wide range of insurers who are able to provide not only restrictive, but wider cover, for these types of properties. We do get people, who phone in for a quote, who say that empty buildings, in their opinion, represent a much better risk. Statistically though, this is not the case. Take pubs for example, empty ones, whether or not they are boarded up are a magnet for thieves (even the copper pipes are still valuable) and they do suffer their share of fires, sometimes caused by the owners when the planning permission they expected does not materialise.

So what sort of price should you pay for an unoccupied property insurance policy? Firstly, you have to have an annual policy. There are no insurers that offer monthly policies. What they tend to do is to provide an annual policy, which you would have to cancel, or alter, when the property is sold or the occupation changes. Beware though, some insurers and brokers do still charge a minimum and deposit premium, which means that even if you cancel after a few weeks, you will still be due for the full annual premium.

So what sort of price should you pay? For fire, lightning, explosion, aircraft and property owners liability, you should expect to pay approximately 0.40% applied to the re-building cost and for residential around 0.25 to 0.30%. So, for a £100,000 (cost of rebuilding, not the purchase/sale price) property, you would pay (including 6% insurance premium tax) £300 odd for an empty house and around £425 for a commercial one.

If you are looking for a quote, quickly, give us a call as soon as you can. For most types of commercial premises, we can turn a quote round in a couple of hours. This is from enquiry, to issue of policy stage, which is not too bad when you compare this to the industry averages.

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

Business insurance – feedback please

Saturday, January 22nd, 2011

Here at Businessinsure, on a busy week, we can providing in excess of 100 new business insurance quotes. In addition to the many thousands of existing policyholders requiring renewal, amendments and of course claims.

We do pride ourselves on being one of the best internet and telesales specialist SME brokers in the UK. If we can’t get a quote to you within an hour or so, we feel we have somehow failed. Of course, it is not a bad thing, there are reasons why it can take a few hours to get a quote, particularly when it is a more complex or larger risk.

What we do want though is feedback. For example, we had an office insurance enquiry, including professional indemnity. Their existing insurers had increased from just under £3,000 per annum to slightly over £4,000. A 30% increase. In any one’s books, this is a bit excessive as they had been claims free for over 5 years.

We duly got a few quotes, the best combined insurance, including the PI, was just under £2,600. So we quoted, all within a couple of hours of the initial call. The problem was, when we phoned them up to see how we had got on, their existing insurers had miraculously dropped from £4,061.95, to £2,500.00. So, we had done all the work, we had forced the clients insurers to do something drastic and unfortunately, because we were so quick we gave the existing insurers the chance to slice a chunk off the premium.

If this is happenign to you after we have quoted, we would appreciate you letting us know. Insurers are a law to themselves. If the client had not looked around, they would have got away with a 30% increase.

You have to remember though, that changing your business insurance provider is nowhere near as complicated as your existing insurer will make out. If you are looking for a cheaper quote, give us a try today.

Posted in business insurance, professional indemnity insurance, professional indemnity insurance quote | No Comments »

Unoccupied commercial building insurance

Friday, January 21st, 2011

If you are looking for commercial building insurance, for an unoccupied property, you may be in for a bit of a shock when you see the prices being quoted.

The prices quoted depend a great deal on the previous use of the property, how long it has been empty, whether the property is boarded up, the location and what your plans are for the property.

Whilst times are tough out there, there are still people who are looking to get a bargain, buying empty commercial properties and changing the use to residential (in the main). But, local authorities are unfortunately as pedantic as ever and whether you think the property would be ideal as flats or not, they may decide differently.

There are many, many empty public houses up and down the land, in prime residential areas. Unlike an empty high street shop, the pub is more suited to being converted to residential use, because it is already in a non-commercial area.

The problem you may face is that the time from purchase, to getting planning permission and then starting the work, can be not just months, but years. If you have a mortgage or finance on the property, then you will need to consider carefully the requirements of that loan and whether or not you need to insure the building. The last thing you want to do is to have a £250,000 mortgage hanging around your neck for a building that is just a pile of rubble!

To get a competitive quote, you need a business insurance broker to look into this for you. They can search the market for you and find the best price, sometimes for wider cover than the standard fire, lightning, aircraft and explosion.

As a very rough guide, you are looking at a rate of around 0.25% applied to the rebuilding cost for residential buildings, this can increase to 0.45% depending on which type of commercial property. But, remember to ask what the cancellation terms are. No-one wants to pay thousands of pounds for a policy, to cancel this in a few months if you get a buyer to find you get a nil return.

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

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