All commercial insurance policies will contains clauses, conditions, warranties, terms and definitions. Without these, brokers, insurers, businesses, lawyers and judges would spend forever disputing, defining, disagreeing, agreeing the minutiae of what is covered and what is not covered. Even with the policies we have in 2011, even after years of “Plain English” type campaigns to make wordings better to understand we still have these debates, day in and day out. The point about these is that, without the majority of the wordings being clarified in this way, it is very difficult to know what your policy gives you.
The flip side of this coin is that it is very clear, in most cases, whether cover does apply and where it applies. Every single business insurance quote we provide details the sums insured, declared figures and limits of indemnity, as well as a summary of the cover. A basic summary can be 20 pages long, so you can imagine how long the actual wording is.
This is why it is so important that when you get your quote, you read through it from start to finish. We have to say to customers, when we issue their policies, that these must be read through from start to finish. We understand that siting down and reading through an eight page policy in it’s entirety, and actually understanding it, is something that not everyone is going to have the time to go through. But, reading through a quote and summary of cover is something that falls under the category of achievable.
Public liability insurance is important as it covers you for damage you may cause at third party premises. You need to make sure though, that if you are doing any work outside of the UK you are covered. Most UK policies will have a territorial limit definition which will be for UK mainland, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands. You need to specify if you are doing work out of the UK and your policy will need to note this.
As an example, we have a customer who imports and supplies gift items. They were attending an exhibition in Paris, when their stand fell and hit a neighbouring stand. The long and short of it was, that they had a claim settled for around €12,000. The UK commercial insurance company dealt with the French insurers of the third party and it was settled very quickly. Without this cover being in place, it would have been very costly and even more time consuming for our customer to settle such a claim.
As we always say, speaking to a business insurance broker is the way forward if you want to get the right cover, at the right price.