April « 2011 « BusinessInsure Blog

Archive for April, 2011

Business insurance quotes over the weekend?

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

We have previously posted about the number of Bank Holidays we are going through at the moment. Just like buses, we have got five in as many weeks.

Most people now know not to try and phone many different businesses during the Bank Holiday period, because they are likely to be shut. But what happens at normal weekends if you are looking for a business insurance quote? At Businessinsure, we have been running for over ten years, we have tried, at different times, different methods to try and deal with the customers who need a quote outside of normal hours.

We have also commented before that we find the websites that offer to compare business insurance, a bit confusing. yes they may be “open” 24 hours a day, but the problem is that if you do fit into their distinct categories, you are less likely to get yourself a quote. Then, what do you do? What you really should do is to speak to someone first of all. Very, very rarely, if you are on the ball, do you need to get yourself a quote at the weekend. If you try and plan what you need, and when you need it, you should be able to get everything you need during business hours.

If you do need to get a quote and simply cannot phone to discuss in business hours, drop us an email to quotes@businessinsure.co.uk, give us as much information as you can and we will then use that to decide what type of quote is required. We will then drop you an email and ask you some further questions (if necessary). Then we can turn it round for you and get you a business insurance quote. We email every single quote and can post or fax to anywhere in the world. The beauty of the modern world is that you can be sitting on a beach in Australia, playing on a smart phone, sorting out your shop insurance requirements.

We have grwon up with internet and email, we understand that the phone is not always the preferred method. Whichever way you want to communicate, try us and see what we can do for you.

Posted in business insurance, compare business insurance, compare business insurance quotes, shop insurance | Comments Off

Not really a business insurance post

Friday, April 29th, 2011

We don’t always have to put up posts relating to business insurance, sometimes there are things in the news that do have a very small, indirect affect on policies.

One of these is the super injunction that everyone’s favourite (not) Sunday morning, jug eared journo, Andrew Marr has just admitted to. Now, the question is, did he admit to it, because it was going to be over turned, or did he do it because he was genuinely embarrased that he resorted to the measure that most journalists think is wrong? Of course, it may be one of the papers were about to blab, maybe his loyal wife found out and said you have to go the press with this.

Whether we dislike him or not, the problem is that being sanctimonious has destroyed any shred of credibility that he had. He did not of course do this on a Saturday, it was just sneaking through a little bit. So the question is, if someone threatens to go to the press about your business, and you are concerned that it will affect your trading, can you claim on a commercial legal expenses insurance cover?

The answer is, as you would probably have guessed, no. But, many business insurance policies do have legal advice helplines. You can therefore at least speak to someone, usually a qualified solicitor, to get some decent, sensible advice.

If you do not have legal expenses, it is worth having, speak to your broker to see how much this can cost to add to your policy.

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Dentist surgery insurance quotation – special deals

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

A business insurance broker cannot operate in a similar way to a shop or retailer supplying physical products. We do not have special end of range deals, special offers or even buy one get one free.

What we can, and do, have is the ability to search the market for you, to get the best deal possible. We have just picked up a case, 11 dentist surgeries on one policy. The customers existing broker had not looked for an alternative in the past 7 years, so they decided to have a quick look themselves.

As a result, we reduced their existing premium from £9,200 to £7,800. Of course, their existing broker tried to back track and match our quote. But, thankfully the client saw sense and realised that only through their hard work had they managed to force the brokers hand. If they had not looked around, the broker would gladly have taken the extra £1,400.

We offer good deals on most products. If you are looking for dentist surgery insurance, you now know where to come. We do not have any guarantees to discount but, to be fair, if cannot find you a better deal, you will struggle in the market place. We are not saying your existing premium for renewal is always too high, but how do you know until you try?

Posted in business insurance broker, dentist surgey insurance | Comments Off

Online security – business insurance issues

Wednesday, April 27th, 2011

Over the last few days we have been hearing snippets of information from Sony and the hack of it’s PlayStation network. Being an Xbox live person, I have never been a member of the PS network, but assume that it is a very similar type of system, as far as storage of personal details is concerned.

We should never accuse anyone of complacency, but you do tend to find with regular online payment networks, that the smaller the amount the less attention you pay to it. So, you have a regular credit card subscription of £10 every month, you just tend to accept it and it continues. Then, a super hack steals the details of not a few, but potentially millions of customers. The guy on the radio this morning said that credit card details are only worth a couple of dollars each, so they would get a potential $50,000,000. Simple maths tells us that up to 25M peoples details may have been stolen.

The question is, was this just a “teenage hacker” or someone more sinister. The answer is, in the vast majority likely to be, more sinister. So how does this “fit” with compensation, seeing as we are more litigious now?

Whatever Sony decide, will be in association with not only their lawyers, but also their business insurance company. Not that we expect there to be any compensation paid, because it is likely to fall to the credit card companies.

But here in the UK, what happens if you store customers card details and then lose them? The answer is, very little actually. You cannot claim on your pub, shop or restaurant insurance policy, because there has not been a physical loss. We keep customers card details, locked away, for a period of 18 months, but without the three digit security code. This is in case we have to refund any monies and always pay this to the card that paid the insurance in the first instance. This is a fraud prevention measure and, without the 3 digit code, the card details are useless.

So, if yo do decide to store some details, make sure you ditch the 3 digit code.

Posted in business insurance, restaurant insurance | Comments Off

Bank Holiday Extravaganza

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Bank Holidays should really be a bit more spread out throughout the year. But, in April and May 2011 we have a glut of days off and at last, we have had some proper Bank Holiday weather. This causes an issue for us in the financial services world as we tend to be tied to whatever days the major financial companies work.

As a small, dynamic growing independent business insurance broker, we aim to provide a first class service at all times. This includes customers who need to talk to us over the weekends, over night and on public holidays.

If you have a commercial insurance policy, with any insurer or broker, we can almost guarantee that the majority of physical losses, ie theft, burst pipes, fires etc, are going to occur when you are not at work. The chances are that the local police will attend a break in and if they have your contact numbers, will be on the phone to you to give you the bad news. They will not wait until 9am to give you a call.

For us as brokers we need to be aware that customers can at some point have a requirement to get a claim dealt with outside of business hours. We therefore have a few different measures in place from monitoring emails outside of business h0urs to having phone calls put through to mobile phones that never leave our sides. We are not foolish enough to try and guarantee you that we will always manage to answer calls and queries at all times. But we do make an effort. We know of one major personal and business insurance broker, with over half a dozen branches, that has the following message, at all times the office is shut “Hello, you are through to XYZ, our offices are closed, please leave a message”

To us, this is just the wrong side of doing the right thing. If you do have a claim, try your broker and then look at your policy wording as you may have an insurers emergency assistance helpline.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker | Comments Off

Commercial insurance quotes – where, how and at what cost?

Friday, April 22nd, 2011

We are hearing in the news that the coalition government is pinning it’s recovery hopes on the entrepreneurial spirit in the UK. This is nothing new, whether you look back ten, twenty or thirty years it is always private enterprise that gets us out of a mess. The public sector, whether or not they will admit it, have not really got a clue about starting businesses. At the end of the day, we in the private sector need some help and support, but at the end of the day it is our money and our time and our brain power that gets enterprises moving.

Having got that off my chest, what do you do when you are looking for a commercial insurance quote, if you are deciding to get a new business off the ground?

Speak to one of the army of entrepreneurial business insurance brokers. We see every type of business come through our doors, to be fair some of the ones we see we just know are not going to get off the ground, let alone past their first year of trading. But, the vast majority are started up by people that you know are going to spend all of their waking hours determined to make a success of the business. But, one thing they need to do, without fail is to protect their business and it’s assets by getting a proper, commercial insurance policy in force.

How to get your quote and at what cost? The answer is to get it over the phone and the costs will of course vary depending on what type of business, what type of stock, what estimated turnover and may other factors. For a shop, restaurant, takeaway, pub etc the sort of costs are going to be between £500 to £1,000, on average. Of course they may be a lot higher, but the average costs are in this sort of range.

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

Online retail insurance

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

One of the many growth areas over the past five to ten years is for online retailers. Many people find it easier to shop from a laptop in the early hours rather than face the hoards on a Saturday.

This means that a growth area for us is people asking for an online retail insurance quote. You would think, as a lay person, that there would be many competitively priced products from the main insurers. Alas, no. Many have their own specific retail products, but these will usually specify somewhere that the business must be trading from a retail premises. If not, then technically they are saying that it is business that cannot be insured on their package product.

Some of them will be prepared to do this on a separate contract, but at a higher cost. Our argument has always been that there really is no difference, in the insurance risks, from an online retailer to a “bricks and mortar” retailer. In fact, the online ones present much less of a public liability insurance risk because there are no real customers wandering around the premises slipping, tripping and claiming.

The online one may present more of a theft risk if they are in a remote industrial estate, but these are few and far between and the risk can be minimised or mitigated by the business insurance company insisting on an intruder alarm.

We are not saying that you should always get the cheapest product possible, but a high street shop with £10,000 stock should really be paying the same as an online retailer in the same street, but trading from an upper floor office. The way to make sure that you get these type of quotes, is to go to a broker. The broker understands which insurers are more flexible, more understanding, have better products and ultimately the better prices.

Posted in business insurance, online retail insurance quote | Comments Off

Professional indemnity – is there more choice?

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

There are a growing number of companies offering professional indemnity insurance. Traditionally, the market was fairly small and, compared to other package products, there are fewer insurers offering this cover. But, there is more choice out there. The key thing is that the commercial insurance companies that offer the cover are still being fairly selective.

Take solicitors professional indemnity, it is easy to see why a new insurer may move into this market. There are thousands of solicitors and they all pay thousands upon thousands of pounds for their cover. But, and it is a big but, it is not that profitable. The last four or five years saw a bit of price war with premiums slowly decreasing. A few new entrants made disastrous forays into this area. Quinn insurance suffered from underpricing and some slacker underwriting than other insurers. Hence they grew market share but they did not tend to pick up the right risks. This is always an issue for a business insurance that decides to move into a new area. They tend to take the easy route and “buy” themselves into the market by underpricing. But, with long tail liability insurance (such as PI), the claims turn around bite you on the bum years down the line of you are not careful.

It is all well and good entering the market, but three, four or even ten years down the line you can rue the day.

But, if you are a management consultant or IT consultancy, you may find it is easier to get yourself cover. The insurers that are involved in the market like the risks that give them less claims. Whilst this may seem fairly obvious it is sometimes more difficult to find the insurer that is going to charge you the right price. The best way to deal with this is to go to a business insurance broker, they will know the best way forward and what insurer, at the current point in time, is the best one to go to.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker, professional indemnity insurance, professional indemnity insurance quote | Comments Off

How quickly can you get a quick business insurance quote?

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Here in the UK, if you include all types of business from sole traders all the way up to multi-national corporations, there are over 1.5m active trading ventures. So, when asking the question “how quick can I get a business insurance quote?”, you need to think about the type of business first of all. If we consider businesses that have a turnover of less than £2,000,000, which account for approximately 90%, then you should be able to get a quote within one working day, at the very latest.

Most will be able to get a quote within a couple of hours. This morning, as an example, we had a phone call at 08.15 UK time from a customer looking for a new fish and chip shop insurance quote. They have spent the last three weeks getting a new shop ready and they are looking to start trading later today. Sensibly, they are taking the approach of starting on a Monday, which will hopefully be the least busy day of the week, building up to the busy Friday and Saturday.

Writing this blog, at 09.10, we have already obtained all the relevant details from the customer, obtained three comparable quotes and emailed through the most competitive. In addition, the best price one included commercial legal expenses, so at £632.00 the customer has, in my eyes, got themselves a bargain. We are now awaiting the phone call to proceed later on. But, and it is always a bit of a pain, that the quicker we get back, all we do with some customers is to set the bar for them to try and beat.

They will, as we always advise, go to more than one business insurance broker for a quote. When this happens, the lazy broker simply says “what is the best quote you have got, and we will beat it”.

The problem is that they may on the odd occasion be able to get a better quote than us, but from experience getting better cover, excesses and terms is very unlikely.

But, when the customer is faced with a cost saving they are sometimes swayed into taking the cheaper one, without consideration to the cover. This is just one of those things I am afraid we have to live with. We cannot sit back and try and second guess when we can/should get a quote to a client. We pride ourselves on turning quotes round quickly and efficiently.

If we are quick and others use that as a benchmark, we just have to live with it. In answer to the question posed, you should be able to get a full, emailed, written quote within two hours of providing all relevant information for most package type products.

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Product liability – exports to US and Canada

Saturday, April 16th, 2011

Nowadays there are many thousands of high street retailers, who also operate a retail website. This does not mean they are neglecting their main business, just looking for an extra way of earning income.

If they have a standard shop insurance policy, then it is worth making the insurers, or the broker, aware of this additional activity. The standard, package type, policy will no doubt have a specific exclusion. You will find that most business insurance policies, where there is product liability cover have the following type of exclusion:-

Product Liability

Cover is excluded in respect of liability for products knowingly supplied or exported to the United States of America and/or Canada.

If a shop is selling products and they know that there are customers in North America, which in this day and age is very easy, then they need to make sure they have the right cover. It is not enough to say, “it’ll never happen to me” “I’ll never get a claim” or anything similar. Claims do occur, with increasing frequency, and you should always seek advice about the best type of policy.

It may well be that if you declare that only a small proportion of your turnover, usually less than 5%, is in respect of exports, and, importantly, you are not manufacturing, then your policy will give you cover. But, the policy will state that any actions brought against you must be in a UK court of law (as this is cheaper for insurers). Therefore, if you do have the relevant cover and you receive notification of a potential claim, then you must do nothing except speak to your business insurance broker in the first instance. Do not react to any notifications you receive without seeking some sort of advice from your broker.

One poitn to mention is where the exclusions say “knowingly”. If you sell a product to Mr A , who sells to Miss B who then sells to a customer in America, you cannot control that supply chain and cover shoudl apply. But, you need to watch out as some policies will simple exclude ALL products liability in respect of US/Canada exports, whether you are aware or not.

Posted in business insurance, product liability insurance, products liability insurance, shop insurance | Comments Off