July « 2011 « BusinessInsure Blog

Archive for July, 2011

Flat roofs – the information the commercial insurance companies want to know.

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

As part of our business insurance broking role, we have to go through a fact finding process. This usually takes the form of a conversation with a customer. We do not like to use pre-printed forms because one minute you could be speaking to a publican, the next an aerobics instructor and after that a UK citizen, living in Australia, trying to sort out cover on the propery that they let out in the UK (and yes, these are real and we managed to get all three quotes converted to policies).

Speaking to the last customer, the property owner, I asked what materials the roof was constructed of. To which he replied, I do not know I have never been in the roof. We did manage to ascertain though that it was a pitched, slate roof. This is what the insurers like, pitched roofs are of course designed to make water drip off, rather than go through and slates, like tiles, have a very long life span, if installed and maintained correctly.

But, when a customer says that they have a flat roof, we have to go into a different mode of questioning, which is why we need the questions in our heads, rather than on the paper, otherwise we would need a very big piece of paper. But what exactly do the insurers need to know and why? For commercial property owners insurance, one of the bigger causes of loss is water ingress from storm. If a roof is manufactrued of anything that is not as substantial as slate, tiles or metal then there is more chance of water getting in and causing damage.

Insurers will need to kow the exact material, the age, when it was last replaced (most felt roofs only last 10-15 years) and whether it is maintained either annully or bi-annually. Insurers then use this information to decide whether to load the premium and/or apply additional terms.

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

Power and telecoms outage

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

As with many modern companies, our telephony is inextricably linked to the internet. We use a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) system as this allows us to tranfer calls, at the drop off a hat, to any phones, anywhere in the world. For Bank Holidays and weekends this is great. Messages can be added, altered, deleted or changed easily as well to let out customers know what we can, and cannot do to help.

But, the flipside of this easily accesible IT is that when there are problems, we seem to suffer more than most. There has, I am reliably informed, been a major power outage in Canary Wharf today. This have affected us up here in Perth.

If you are looking for a business insurance quote, please keep trying to get through. We have a system in place and are contacting customers within less then 10 minutes if they leave a message.

We do apologise for any inconvenience caused during the 6th July 2011. If yo udo nto want to get through on the phone, we have an online business insurance quotation request form, please fire your details through and we will be in touch.

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

Professional indemnity insurance – excess levels

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

The first part of this post does not relate to professional indemnity insurance, but it is relevant. BIB was asked yesterday to quote for a pub, it was a new venture for the customer, taking over a trading, city centre, pub. Now, we are quite proud of the markets we have for pub insurance, we can in most cases beat any other provider hands down on price and cover.

Our quote was around £700, which we knew was good. But the customer laughed and said thye had a quote for £400. Thankfully the customer was astute enough to let the alarm bells ringing in his head ask us why we were more expensive. I explained that our quote was the cheapest from the 7 providers approached, so it could only be more expensive because of cover, warranties, excesses or conditions being different. The customer emailed through their quote and lo and behold, the excess was over £1,000, there was no accidental damage cover, no legal expenses and the contents sums insured were half what we quoted. We sorted this all out and got the cover in place.

Now, what has this got to do with professional indemnity insurance? It is the excess levels. Not only are we seeing premiums starting to increase during 2011, insurers are also bumping up the excesses. Now, when we say bumping up this does not mean a £250 excess last year is now £300, more like they are trying to increase to £500 or £750. As a broker, it is our job to always find the customer the best deal, if we see an increased excess we will either get the insurer to reduce, or go elsewhere.

The same applies to PI insurance, a standard IT contractor with a £500,000 limit of indemnity may only have had a £250 excess over the past few years, some insurers though are pushing these up three and four fold. When you get your renewal through, check not only the premium, but the excess. If this has gone up as well, give us a shout and we’ll look around for you.

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

Employees personal effects cover.

Monday, July 4th, 2011

We have an ongoing office insurance claim at the moment. It is, unfortunately for the insurers, one of a growing type of claims by the criminal fraternity. Any building that has scaffolding up is at an increased threat of break in, as are the buildings in the vicinity. It is nothing new of course, but we have seen a significant rise in claims of this type over the past 18 months.

With office insurance policies, they have what is called, full theft cover. The means that there need not be evidence of a break in (or break out), which applies to most business and commercial insurance policies. Therefore, the office that decides not to lock it’s windows, because they are on the upper floors of a building, even though there is scaffolding, are still covered. Some of the more difficult insurers around will try to say that the insured was not taking due care. But, most of the mainstream ones will happily pay a claim.

But, what happens to employees personal effects. Many employees leave things, such as clothin or electrical goods at their place of work on the odd occassion. This means that when there is an opportunistic break in, there is a fair chance that if it is worth anything, it will be nicked.

Now, insurers will look for there to be cover under a home policy, but the chances are that an employee may not have a policy for personal effects cover, away from the home. So, it quite rightly should fall under the office insurance policy. You should just check that you have this cover, and importantly for how much. An office of 50 people is not going to get very far if the personal effects sum insured is £250, which one insurer has in their wording. What you are looking for is a limit per employee or a higher overall limit.

As with everything, speak to an independent business insurance broker who can help you sift throuhg the good, the bad and the ugly as far as quotes and policies are concerned.

Posted in business insurance, office insurance, personal effects insurance | Comments Off

What is a reasonable business insurance excess?

Saturday, July 2nd, 2011

Any customers preferred business insurance excess would of course be very low, the isnurers preferred excess would be the opposite. Most policies will have an excess for all types of claims, except employers liability insurance. As far as EL is concerned, an excess cannot be applied. One large insurer, that was not authorised or approved by the UK Financial Service Authority used to appy excesses, which we always thought was incorrect.

But, for your common or garden package policy for contents, stock, glass etc, what is a reasonable excess? The reason we are talking about this is that there are many insurers that are not only increasing their premiums, but also their excesses as well. Where we would have seen an excess of £250 some renewals are coming through with £500 excesses which are way too excessive. When we get these, we look around for alternatives and so should you.

A sensible and reasonable excess would be £200 to £250 for property damage, ie contents, stock and commercial building insurance. Glass claims should have a lower excess in the region of £100-£250.

When you get your renewal, you need to look very carefully as we are finding some insurers, not all, are releasing renewals with additional excesses noted in the “small print” and certain brokers are not advising clients of this.

If you have had an excessive increase to your excess, please call us to discuss and we will see what we can do to help you.

Posted in business building insurance, business insurance, business insurance excess | Comments Off

Business insurance premiums increasing, or not?

Friday, July 1st, 2011

As an independent business insurance broker, we have agencies with or access to dozens of different insurers. We are well placed to see what insurers are doing, or trying to do, as far as premiums are concerned.

There are differences in cover being applied, but we will go over that separately. Insurers can join, although they are not obliged to, the Association of British Insurers, or ABI and this is their trade body. Having worked for an insurer many years ago, I was always frustrated that insurers and brokers never really got a good press. When prices are decreasing or static, people accept this and when prices are on the increase, they moan. This is where the ABI should be putting out press releases by the bucket load explaining why there are increases.

All types of cover, from restaurant, to pub, to hotel, to engineering to office insurance are having increased premiums applied. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, insurance premium tax has increased from 5 to 6% so you should expect a 1% increase. Secondly, sums insured are being index-linked, whilst the property market is in the doldrums, the actual re-building costs are on the way up, you can expect index-linking of around 3-6%. And thirdly, some insurers are actual increasing their prices!

At last, insurers have realised that they have been underpricing for about 10 years now and are starting to increase their premiums. But, with many it is the usual knee jerk reaction. They do not charge the correct price, for say 5 or 6 years and then try to re-correct this in one year. As a result we are being asked to offer quotes to customers who are seeing increases in excess of 15%. Now, this is crazy, if you are claims free. If you have had a claim, then fair enough you will probably be expecting an increase. But claims free, or clean business should only be expecting increases around the 5% mark.

If you have not claimed for the last three to five years and are being asked to swallow an increase in excess of 5%, give us a call and, in 90% or more of cases we can offer you a better price and comparable, if not better, cover.

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