Everyone knows that, in the vast majority of cases, you only get what you pay for. Take running trainers for example. If you are training for a marathon, you would be well advised to get yourself a pair of shoes with the correct grip, padding and durability that you will need for doing your three runs a week for six months. In fact, if you are starting out from scratch, the chances are you will need a couple of pairs by the time you cross the tape. When we say decent pairs, you are looking at £50 and upwards, as a minimum. If you went any cheaper then the chances of you getting across that tape diminish. So, you get what you pay for and you need a decent pair from a big well known brand.

Does this apply in the world of business insurance? Yes and no, is our usual standard answer. We quoted for a restaurant insurance package a few years ago. We saved the customer a few hundred pounds, and renewed the policy last year at the same premium of £725.00, even with the increased insurance premium tax.

2012 renewal came around and we agreed with the insurers, as it was claims free, that we could offer renewal again at £725.00. So, 2010, 2011 and 2012 were unchanged premiums and the cover was good. They were getting accidental damage, a decent excess and some other additions to cover that were not available in the open market. But, the customer had a quote from a competitor who, without naming names, have a reputation for offering cheap premiums, with low cover, high excesses and a questionable policy on paying out claims early. But, this is my opinion, from speaking to other customers. At the end of the day, we cannot denigrate a competitor without evidence, but we did ask the customer if they knew what they were getting. Their cheap business insurance quote, at £500.00, was just a bit too cheap. But they were happy to take it, against our advice.

This is where the difficulty lies, cheap business insurance is available, but at the end of the day, you get what you pay for and you will find out, in the event of a claim, that your cheap quote was cheap for a reason. In 2012, if you are renewing your business insurance, you should be expecting a few percent increase for index-linking. Any more, then you should be looking elsewhere, if you are looking around, come to Businessinsure and see what we can offer you.

Commercial insurance companies have made great strides over the years to make their policy wordings easier to read and understand. It may be easy to criticise parts of their policies for being long winded, but at the heart of it all is that the policy is a legal contract. Day in day, day out, these policies are relied on and referred to in courts of law up and down the land. Therefore, they have to be robust enough to be understood, fairly, by both parties. Sometimes though, you do just need a bit of help in explainin the terms.

All policies have terms, conditions, warranties and excesses. There are some things that you need to do, some that the insurers need to do, in the event of a loss.

If you have warehouse insurance, then you may find your quote or policy is subject to a stillage warranty. Without access to a good dictionary or Google, it is difficult know what this is. Stillage is an old shipping term, related to storing things on a pallet or pallet with sides.

An insurers stillage warranty should really be called a….storing stock away from the floor…..warranty. This is all it really is. In he event of a light flood, or burst pipe, even if the bottom few centimetres of stock are damaged, wet, you normally have to chuck the whole lot. A stillage warranty will not prevent a major flood from destroying your stock but it’s aim is to prevent damage by a light water damage. What it says, is that your stock must be stored on pallets or shelving at least 10cm, 15cm or some other defined height from floor level.

Please check whether this applies to your cover because insurers may turn round and repudiate, or turn down, any claim you may make for water damage.

It is funny, I have just gone through the spell check and guess what, stillage is not recognised! This is where the benefits of getting a business insurance quote from a broker shine through. If you go online and get a quote at 2am, are you really going to read through 15 or 20 pages of terms and conditions? Or, do you deal through a broker who really should point out in a summarised two or three page quote what terms, conditions, warranties and excess apply.