February « 2011 « BusinessInsure Blog

Archive for February, 2011

Business insurance – getting a new policy, how do I know what I need?

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

If you are just starting a new venture, or looking around for an alternative business insurance quote, how do you know exactly what cover you need or whether the cover you have got is adequate?

In life you can either be described as a risk preferrer or risk averse. If you are averse to, or do not like, risk, then you will typically do all you can to avoid placing your business at risk. It stands to reason that if you are a risk preferrer, then you are more likely to take risks or let your business face risks.

Part of the risk averse process is to buy some form of insurance, or protection, to ensure that in the event of a risk (ie a storm) damaging your business, then you will receive financial recompense for this.

But, whilst you may look at a commercial insurance policy and think it is the same as any other, this is far from the truth. It is the small differences in the policies that, when they are all combined make you realise that there are enough differences to usually warrant paying a premium differential.

But, at a basic level how do you know what cover you need, what cover you must have and what cover is actually available? You can spend days, and we mean days, searching the internet to find information about your particular industry and the type of cover available. Or, you can do it the easy way and speak to a business insurance broker. Get the broker to recommend, advise, suggest or help you to see what covers there are available for your business. After all, it is their job.

If you are risk averse, you can spend a lot of money buying insurance policies for everything, whereas what you really want is to be able to spend money wisely and sensibly. This is where the broker comes in to help you balance what you can afford to spend and what products are available.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker, commercial insurance, what business insurance do I need? | Comments Off

Takeaway insurance – signs, blinds and canopies

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Business insurance cover is a necessity, all of us in business know this. There may not always be a legal requirement to have cover in place, but the sensible and prudent amongst us appreciate that the few hundred pounds you spend on cover gives you the piece of mind you need.

The difference between policy A, policy B and policy C may not, at first glance, seem that much. The prices may be similar, the excess may look around the same (average would be £250 all claims and £1,000 for subsidence).

But, with takeaway insurance in particular, one of the biggest sources of claims is damage to shop front glass and signage, including canopies. What does this mean? Well, certain insurers only include this cover if you ask them to put in a particular amount. So, you need to add up the cost of all the shop front glass, all the signs and any canopies that you have. If this would cost £2,000 to replace, then you need to add this amount to your cover. The cost per £1,000, because this is where the losses occur, can be up to £70 or £80, which is quite a lot when you compare this as a percentage rate.

But, you do need ot sit there yourself and work out what the potential is of your signs being damaged by storm or even by vandalism. Wherever you are in the country, we would hazard a guess that the chances of this happening are much higher than you would want to accept. Although we have had the cold weather, we have bene relatively lucky over the past few months in that pure storm losses, caused by wind, have been very low.

As the months go by between now and Easter, we will start to see the frequency and severity of storm losses increase. Not dramatically, but enough to make it worthwhile checking whether you have adequate cover.

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

Multi location commercial property owners insurance

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Economies of scale apply to every product or service you may purchase in life. Go to any commercial supplier and if they charge you £5 for one item, if you are looking to buy 500, you know that you are going to get a better price than £5 each. It is, in most cases, the same with commercial insurance. If you have a single policy and are looking to add further buildings, then you would expect that you are going to get a better price.

Usually, this is the case. If you have a commercial property owners insurance policy, with any insurer, then the more properties you are looking to insure, the better the overall rate you should receive. However, this can work against you as well. If you have five properties insured and you are getting, for example, a premium of £200 per property, if one of them suffers a large claim then it is likely that the overall policy is going have a rating increase applied.

The balance is, that you can have separate policies for each and every property and if one suffers a claim, it does not necessarily mean that the others will increase as well. You do of course have to declare to each and every insurer you deal with that you have had claims under different policies, but the chances are that they are going to take a fairly sensible approach to this and not penalise your other policies for a fortuitous loss.

The discounts that you do receive are not always sufficient to make you stay with a particular insurer. Every time we, as business insurance brokers, get additional quotes, we will always look not only at the existing insurers, but to see if any others will provide a better price.

The difficulty we face with insurers is, that in January they may not be looking for a particular type of business but in March they have changed their tune and are pulling out all the stops to pick up business they previously did not want. If we don’t keep a close check on this, then the customer is going to, quite rightly, drift away to a more competitive alternative.

Posted in business insurance, commercial insurance, commercial property owners insurance | No Comments »

What sort of increase should you expect on your business insurance premium?

Friday, February 11th, 2011

In the UK, we are still in a period of historically low interest rates, which are set by the Bank of England. We are not fooled though and we can see around us everything is going up in price. Even if you strip out the worst culprit, fuel, there are very few things you can purchase in this day and age that are cheaper than they were a few years ago. The same is true of your business insurance. We have blogged long and hard about how, if you spend some time looking in the right places, you will always get yourself a good deal.

The good news is, that this is still true. Whether or not your insurance renewal is going up or not, there is still sufficient choice out there for you to find the right price and product. But, and it is a big but, you need to have a clean claims history. If you have been trading for more than three years and have not had any claims in the past three years, you can expect your business insurance premium to go up by just a few percent. A year or two ago we would have said that even this is too much, but we have to accept that the 1% insurance premium tax increase from the government is affecting all prices. So, a few percent is what you should expect.

Notice though, that we did not say accept. Even if your existing cover has only gone up by a small amount, you still should look around because, how do you know that your premium that you paid last year was competitive? If your broker says that they have scoured the market and got written confirmed quotes from every single provider they deal with and your current provider is still the best, price and cover wise, then they can do no more.

If you are still feeling the after effects of the recession and are looking to save some pounds, then you should still make the odd call to a business insurance broker to at least let them consider your current renewal offer and to let you know what they think is the next best alternative. If they can’t compete, all well and good, you are paying a good price, if they can beat it, then all well and good again, because you will be saving some money!

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker | Comments Off

Getting a small business insurance quote – quickly.

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

In business, time is precious. As someone who has started a business from a standing start I realise that balancing all of the priorities you have day to day is extremely difficult. On one day you may have a bit of free time that you were not expecting due to a cancellation only to find the next few days you cannot even stop to think, let alone do anything else because you are so busy.

So, when you get your business insurance renewal documents on your doorstep, you can almost guarantee that the first thing you will do is to say that you will look around for an alternative prior to the renewal date. The second thing you will do, is to then struggle to find enough time to sit down with the right documents to get yourself a handful of other quotes.

Things have changes though, for the better, in that it does not always take that much time for you to get an alternative small business insurance quote to at least compare with your existing renewal. Even if your renewal has been at the same sort of figure for years and years, how do you know that you are still paying the right price?

Complacency is a serious issue with some business insurance brokers, to get you as a new customer they will pull out all the stops and do the best deal possible. Then, when it comes to renewal, they will simple offer you the existing insurers renewal, if this is 10% more, then they still offer it.

So, instead of just sitting back and taking what they send to you, turn the tables and get yourself a quote. Going back to the time issue, if you pick a broker that trades online and via telesales, then the chances are that, if you have your existing renewal to hand, you can get a comparative quote within about ten minutes, which is not bad really!

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

Restaurant insurance, with and without buildings

Monday, February 7th, 2011

If you are looking for a restaurant insurance quote, including buildings, you may want to go one step further and get yourself two different quotes.

There are some insurers that offer very competitive prices for restaurant policies, but as soon as you add the buildings, the price shoots through the roof. So, the option you have is to get one policy for the restaurant and then a separate one for the commercial building insurance. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it this way, contrary to what some brokers may tell you.

Some will say that you should always put the insurance covers with the one insurer. But why would you do this if the cost is prohibitive? If it is cheaper, and you are not losing out on cover, to have one policy with insurer a and the other with insurer b, then why not do this?

If the broker you get these two quotes from had any qualms whatsoever about the rights and wrongs of doing this, then they would not consider it because we have to, at all times, offer you the best product.

You may decide to put the buildings insurance in a limited company or individuals name and then the restaurant insurance in a different name. This happens a lost when people have pensions that own buildings which are then rented to their own business. Unless there are common directors, you cannot (usually) insure different limited companies on the same policy. So, if the building is owned by a different company (although associated) to the restaurant, you need to speak to someone like businessinsure as we understand the different ways that cover can be arranged.

We do not like to say we can guarantee to beat anyone else, because there are always some very, very cheap prices out there (with very , very basic cover). What we can do is offer a very good service with prices that in 80% of cases are better than you would get elsewhere.

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

Getting a pub insurance quote for a thatched premises

Friday, February 4th, 2011

In most areas of England, and less so in Scotland and Wales, there are still many, many thatched properties. The vast majority of these are residential, but there are still a large number used by the licensed trade. The higher risk of fire means that this does affect the availability of competitive pub insurance.

There are two different things to consider. The first is if you are looking for a full package including the buildings and the second is where you lease the building. Over 90% of the thatched properties, used as pubs or restaurants, are owned by a brewery group or property owner. If you do have an individual building you need to get insured then we can help, through access to specialist insurers.

If however you are looking for a quote for the trading risk (ie stock, contents, liabilities etc) then it is fairly easy for us to get a quote. Many of the commercial insurance companies that offer pub policies will shy away from this. The markets we have are much happier to underwrite these types of risks. The only usual requirement is that there is an “open fire” warranty applied. This effectively means that if there is an open fire then it is checked 30 minutes after the pub is closed (and the fire is extinguished).

Your landlord will probably have similar requirements under their commercial building insurance policy, so you are more than likely to be complying already with something very similar. If the thatched roof is very old, or in poor condition, you may have trouble getting damage for ingress of water (from a storm) as this likelihood is increased as the roof deteriorates. You do tend to find though that roofs are replaced every 10 to 15 years and a lot are now replaced with metal sheets at the base. This prevents the risk of fire spreading to the roof and water ingress going the other way.

The best thing you can do is give a few brokers a call. For a pub (no buildings) package quote, with approximately £30,000 contents and other covers, we can get a quote for around £750 per annum, depending on the location and other factors (including claims and whether the owners live in).

Posted in commercial buildings insurance, commercial insurance, pub insurance quote | Comments Off

Landlord insurance – whats not in the definition of buildings?

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

As a business insurance broker, we are legally obliged to provide as much information as possible to our potential clients. This does involve, at times, the provision of significant amounts of paperwork. For every single quote we provide, we have to send a written quotation, a copy of our terms of business and a summary of the insurance cover.

This can add up to over 50 pages of fairly detailed text. As we speak to every single customer that obtains a quote from us, we do discuss exactly what is, and what is not, included in the quote.

It is worth stating, again though what the definition of buildings in a landlord insurance quote. To simplify things, we tend to say that the buildings covers everything that you would not necessarily take with you when you move. The purpose of this definition is to explain that everything that is effectively movable, therefore does not fall under this definition.

The point you need to consider as a landlord or property owner is whether you are required to cover the following items:-

Carpets, curtains, lino/vinyl flooring, white goods (movable and fixed) and any furniture.

If you are letting the property furnished (full or in part) then you need to insure for contents. If you are letting unfurnished, then you need to add to your policy a contents section for the carpets, curtains, movable flooring and white goods that are not fitted. Even when you look at a single bed flat, this can add up to £5,000. You have to consider what the replacement cost, as new, would be.

Please do not think that buildings should include carpets because you would not take a carpet with you. Unless you can provide that the carpet is wholly glued to the floor, then it is part of the contents. All insurers consider buildings and contents the same. Even if you have to pay an extra £20 or £30 per year to add contents, it is worth it in the event of a loss. You cannot ask the tenant to insure the carpets or curtains unless they actually own them and this can be proven.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker, landlord insurance quote | No Comments »

Office insurance – public liability at £5,000,000

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

If you are working for another company, or government body (including local authorities) you will probably find that you are asked to complete a pre-contract business insurance form.

What this asks, is that you provide details of all of the current insurance covers you have, which will need to be at the levels that the form requires. The form will contain, as an absolute minimum, the three levels of liability cover, employers, public and products.

Anyone in business will know that you must have employers liability insurance in force if you have any employees. What is less well known is that the law says this must be at a limit of indemnity any one claim of £5,000,000, whereas most insurers automatically provide this at £10,000,000. Hence, the form will state that you need £10m.

As far as public and products liability is concerned, most will request that you have a limit of £5,000,000. Whether you need this cover (at this limit) or not is immaterial, if you want the contract you need to have the cover. Most UK office insurance policies have cover automatically at £2,000,000.

The good news is that if you increase this from £2m to £5m (a 150% increase) the premium does not increase at anywhere near that sort of level. A typical small office insurance policy, that has an annual premium of £500 will only increase by 10 or 15% if the liability levels are increased.

The real costs can occur if you are asked to increase the public liability from £2m to £10m. Most insurers are only happy to provide a limit fo £5,000,000 in one “hit”. Asking them to accept the potential of £10,000,000 (albeit very rare) is too much. This is where we need to go to a different insurer to get the extra £5m. Typical premiums (annually) for this, cost around £550.

Posted in business insurance, office insurance, office insurance quote, public liability insurance | No Comments »

Commercial Combined Insurance – average premiums

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

A typical call to Businessinsure, ” I am thinking of starting a business, my bank have told me to get commercial combined insurance, how much will it cost?”.

We could quote easily reply with a whole host of “how long is a piece of string?” answers, but this doesn’t help the customer and would make them think we are being just a bit too smart.

It is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, the banks profess that they want to lend money (after all for half of them it is the taxpayers money being recycled anyway) but the number of hoops you need to go through are ever increasing.

One thing you can be certain is that the banks will not lend you money unless they know that the assets that you are purchasing are adequately insured. This is a fairly understandable point from the banks, they don’t want to lend you £50k to get a machine which is destroyed by fire three days later with no insurance. They end up with a bad debt because, usually, the person borrowing the money cannot pay it back because they do not have the machine to earn them the money.

That we understand. So, the bank say before you can even have a a “lending discussion” you need to get a business insurance quote. Usually a commercial combined contract, which is more suited to the industrial type business. But, how do you even get an idea of the annual premium to put in your business plan?

You need to speak to a friendly business insurance broker who understands that you need to just get an indication, not a fully blown 10 page written quote. We can’t tell you the average premiums because there aren’t any, what we can do is at least try to give you an idea based on years and years of experience.

Posted in business insurance, commercial combined insurance | Comments Off