business insurance quote « BusinessInsure Blog

Archive for the ‘business insurance quote’ Category

Multi location business insurance – policy or policies?

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Where a business has more than one location, they have a choice of either taking out a single policy, to cover all the locations together, or separate policies. The question is, is there any benefit to taking out the single policy or not?

It really depends on whether you want to have one single policy, with one single renewal date and, the worst of it all, is one single premium payment. You can of course pay the premium in instalments of course.

The multi location policy would normally be more suited to a portfolio commercial property insurance policy. If an individual or a business owns more than three or four properties, it can be a bit time consuming to work out all of the individual renewal dates and go through the detailed review process at many different times throughout the year. Having worked at a large insurer that concentrated on the leisure industry, we used to deal with the large public house estates. These numbered in the hundreds and thousands.

Whereas for the smaller businesses, it can be better to have individual policies. You do not always tend to get a bigger saving by combining all of your locations into one policy. If you are careful and speak to a decent broker, they can get you good deals for all types of location. The one point you need to be aware of is claims.

The more properties you own, of course the more likelihood there is of a loss. You need to declare to your insurers every single loss, or claim, whether insured or not. Therefore, if you own three buildings and have three separate policies, at each renewal you need to declare to each insurer of each risk, the claims that you have suffered on each property.

If you have a portfolio policy, you do not need to think about this as there is one insurer for all the properties. But, one claim may adversely affect the pricing for the whole policy. Whereas, with three separate policies if you have a claim on one, and declare this to the other insurers then they may not take this into account as it happened at another location.

As we always say, and always will say, the best way to decide the way forward is to speak to an independent business insurance broker. They will let you know the options available. If you try a website that “offers” to compare business insurance, you will never know the different options available.

Posted in Business insurance comparison websites, business insurance, business insurance quote, business insurance quotes, compare business insurance | Comments Off

Business interruption insurance – what indemnity period?

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

All package commercial insurance policies, for example those covering pubs, shops, offices, restaurants, takeaways and salons, will include an element of cover if the business is interrupted, after a loss.

The breadth and depth of cover provided under these policies can vary a great deal. As with all policies, you only really find out how wide the cover is, in the event of a claim. If a business suffers a loss that forces closure, or reduced trading, then this should be covered under their business interruption section. This also goes by the alternative title of consequential loss or, the more descriptive, loss of income. Other sections of cover may have excesses applying, for example glass usually has an excess of £100 or £250, theft is around the £200-£250 mark but for business interruption, under package policies, there is no excess.

In the vast majority of cases a business interruption claim will be submitted alongside a material damage claim for the same risk address. For example, a shop has a burst pipe in the winter and submits a claim for new contents and stock. This is damage to the business assets, or material/property damage. If they are closed, which they undoubtedly will be, then they will submit a claim under their business interruption section.

There does not have to be a loss at the same address though, for there to be a valid claim. Without going into too much details, a business interruption will have specified perils (ie storm, flood, fire) and as long as there is a material damage loss for the same peril, then cover will apply. This means that if there is a fire in a neighbouring property, and the street is closed, or access is denied, then a claim can be submitted even if there is no claim submitted under the property damage.

The bit you really need to think about is the indemnity period. If that fire happened to your property or business and you had to rebuild, from scratch, how long would this take? If your indemnity period is 12 months, and you have to trade from the same address, then you may need to think about extending this. Time and time again businesses realises that 12 months disappears, like that. If there is a devastating fire, then you will have to clear the site, get architects and/or surveyors in to discuss rebuilding, get tenders out, maybe seek planning permission and then start the work. This can, and does, take more than a year in certain cases. A lot of businesses can trade again, anywhere they want. This is why office insurance policies can have increased cost of working expenses. But, a hotel, pub or restaurant is known in that area and cannot really up sticks and move.

When you are getting a business insurance quote, please speak to an independent broker as they will discuss all of these things with you. You can then decide whether to get cover for 12, 18, 24 or 36 months which are the usual periods available.

Posted in business insurance quote | Comments Off

Getting a better business insurance renewal quote.

Friday, September 30th, 2011

Ask anyone in the world of business insurance and they will tell you that getting new business is many times more expensive than renewing an existing policy. There are the upfront “acquisition” costs, marketing and time in providing the quotes and then there are the processing and compliance costs in actually getting the policy issued to the client.

To the layman, this may not seem like a huge amount of work or effort, but when you compare this to the work involved in issuing a renewal you’re probably looking at three to four times the cost for new business, compared to renewal. This would make you think that insurers would be keener to keep the renewals than target new business. Whilst the rhetoric from insurers follows this stance, the reality is that they still price new business more keenly than renewals. This is in the hope (which is proven) that once a customer takes out a new business insurance quote, a bit of complacency sets in and as long as there are not huge increases, the customer will renew.

For every hundred new policies they issue, all commercial insurance companies have percentage targets for the amount they want to renew. This means that they have percentage targets for the amount of business they are happy, or prepared, to lose. The ones we have worked with over the years will usually look for a renewal percentage of 75% on the number of policies, if they get 85%+ they are over the moon.

All of this leads to the fact that your existing commercial insurance renewal, is not always going to be the most competitive price available from your insurer. A little experiment is to just phone up your broker when you get your renewal (if it has gone up by more than inflation and index-linking) and ask them to shave a bit of the premium. Without even supplying an alternative renewal quote you can usually get 5% off just for making the phone call.

You do have to be careful though, you may have to prove that you have an alternative cheaper quote on the same terms and conditions, but it is always, and I repeat always, worth looking around at renewal if you have had an excessive increase. The next post will cover additional terms at renewal, which can cost you even more financially.

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

Employers liability insurance – checking it is in force.

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Employers liability insurance is one of our most regular topics we write about. It is one of the few covers that, in the UK, there is a legal requirement to have. The difficulty is that there is no real, robust, definitive process for checking whether this cover is in force.

It would be a lot easier if, for example, all businesses traded as limited companies and some form of central register could be created. There is a database in existence for motor insurance, whereby the insurers have a requirement to notify the motor insurance database of any insurance cover in place for vehicles. Any amendments, alterations or changes need to be updated very quickly. This way the various Police forces can tap into this central database and check whether a vehicle has adequate cover. This is also tied in with the ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) cameras. If a car, which the database says does not have insurance, drives past a Police car with one of these cameras, the it is immediately flagged up.

However, you may have noticed that we say, “if the database says”. This is where there are some problems with the information not being updated. As a business insurance broker, we do get involved in three way conversations where the Police have stopped one of our policyholders as the insurers have not notified the motor insurance database of a change of vehicle. We always get there in the end, but it can take a good few hours out of your day unnecessarily.

Employers liability insurance is no as easy, because the more astute of you will realise that businesses do not simply trade as limited companies only. In addition, you can have plc’s, charities, sole traders with employees, partnerships with employees, not for profit companies, limited liability partnerships and literally dozens of others. The Health and Safety Executive do their bit when they undertake physical, on site, inspections of businesses. In reality though, these visits are decreasing and there are a whole host of other things that are potentially more important to check.

A proper, robust, usable database is many years away. In the meantime, if you have employees, just make sure that your business insurance quote includes cover in the event of injury, illness or disease to them.

Posted in business insurance broker, business insurance quote, employers liability insurance | Comments Off

Business insurance – direct debit options

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

We are getting a number of calls from customers, seeking new business insurance quotes, who have had to look around mid-term for an alternative insurance quote. The reasons are because there have been problems with their direct debits and their current insurers are refusing to continue the policy because of a couple of defaults. There is a cost, administration wise, for insurers dealing with defaults. This has resulted in more and more deciding that it is not worth continuing a policy if there have been a couple of defaults.

The reason for writing about it is that the customers have not really had much choice in the defaults, even if it is due to their bank accounts changing numbers or some other administration reason outwith the insured control, they are just giving 7 days notice and cancelling.

You just need to be careful that if an insurer threatens cancellation, that they probably are going to follow this through unless you speak to your bank and sort things out. The other end of the scale is that we have just had someone complain that we have cancelled their insurance unnecessarily. They were out of the country for three months, not answering mobiles, texts, emails or post and had defaulted four consecutive months. We tried as much as we could to hold off the insurers cancelling but in the end, they were going to charge us the four months premium. So we had to cancel this. The client was incorrect to expect us to hold this open for a third of a year.

Posted in business insurance quote | Comments Off

Getting a business insurance quote – the best way?

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

I had the misfortune to have to use an online business insurance quote comparison site. I shall not name names, but there was a reason for me having to use it. One of our existing clients, who we have worked with for around five or six years, sought an alternative premium at renewal time. They had a new employee who said that they could save money by looking around.

The problem was, that they chose to do this online, with no human interaction. It is a small office policy that we cover for them, they have a single location and £20,000 of servers in a secure central London location. We offered renewal at a very reasonable premium of £2,055.97. As we have mentioned in previous posts, we are conscious of the need to treat customers fairly at all stages of our relationship with them, which includes renewal. I sought three alternatives, one insurer wasn’t prepared to cover the servers at a 3rd party location and the two others were nearer to the £2,500 mark. I received a call from our contact who said that they had a quote for £1,600.00. Although they did not come out with it, there was the underlying message that they felt we had been overcharging them as they had managed to get a quote at 20% less. Managing the situation as best I could, I bought a few hours to respond. This was when I found out that they had got an online office insurance quote from a comparison site. When I asked for and received the quote, I was a bit angry to say the least.

The new employee had tried their best, but the quote they received did no offer accidental damage, did not offer portable equipment cover (ie laptops) and more importantly did not mention the servers. I got their permission to phone and discuss the quote. During the discussion I visited the website in question, you had to actually check the summary of cover, in a different pdf file, to see that accidental damage cover was not included, unless you asked for it. After making all of the relevant changes, the quote was £3,000 plus.

This was a result for us, the customer realised that the personal service you get from a human being who is also a business insurance broker, makes all the difference in the world. These online sites are the bane of my business life. They sell on price alone, with cover being secondary. How you can offer a business insurance quote without accidental damage is beyond me. The problem will be, if customers try to make a claim and this is then turned down, it is the industry as a whole that gets tarred with the same brush.

Businessinsure, as you can probably guess, can offer you a competitive office insurance quote, with accidental damage cover.

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

Insurance renewal premiums – what the insurers think they can get away with.

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

As a business insurance broker, we do not sell any house, car or other “personal” insurances. As a result of this, we have no option than to go to the market for our own personal policies. This is not a bad thing because we get to see what is going on in the outside world.

My home policy is due for renewal later on this year. I took up an offer with a building society last year, who I shall not name, given what happened. I moved to them as I have an account with them and in 2010 their premium was £417.00. This was reasonable and the cover was pretty good for the price. This years renewal offer came in the post at £526.00. I only know what I paid last year because I had to phone up and ask them. I received a six page letter from them, explaining that I had no claims discount and a discount for my house and contents being done together. What it did not say (which really frustrated me) was what I paid last year.

Businessinsure always let you know what you paid last year and/or whether there has been an increase. The letter I received for my policy had nothing of the sort in it. The thing that annoys me is that as an industry, we tend to get tarred with the same brush. If this happened to someone else they would probably just tut and say that is what you expect from insurers. This is not the case though. We are very proud of our pricing at new business insurance quote stage but we are equally as proud of the work we do at renewal. We have to, and do, treat customers fairly at every stage of our dealings with them. This involves making sure we offer the very best cover AND premium.

For my renewal, I thought I would give the insurers the opportunity to let me know why the premium had gone up. This is why I cannot mention their name. Their representative on the phone said to me “You are lucky it has only gone up by 25%, most insurances are increasing by over 40%”. And that, as they say, was that. He honestly believed that was the best sales line. We are close enough to the industry to know that for certain classes, double digit percentage increases are being applied. But in the main, if you have not claimed and it is not a motor policy, then you should be only expecting an increase of around 5%. Any more than this, and you should be taking the opportunity to llok around.

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

Salon insurance – adequate cover for stock

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

Salon Hairdressing and beauty salons, along with many other types of business in the UK, have had to learn the hard way in recent years and adapt to survive. There are very few “pure” hairdressers trading around the country. Walk into any ladies or unisex salon and you are more likely to find displays of products, shampoos, lotions and conditioners for sale.

I have been involved in the supply of salon insurance policies for over 20 years. Back in the early 1990’s, you would be lucky to have a stock sum insured of a few hundred pounds. This was purely to cover the stock in trade. Most hairdressers and barbers simply stored the stock they used in the shop. If customers wanted to buy anything, this was sold to them in a normal retail sense. Then, as time went by, more and more salons realised that the stock they used was not normally available in the supermarkets or chemists. They started to increase the ra nge of stock until you would normally find one wall, in the reception area, stacked full of stock for sale. This meant that stock levels, and the sums insured, started to increase. As these items were stored at the front of the shop, smash and grab thefts, whilst not a big problem, did increase.

Over the past 5 years though, the type of stock sold has increased from expensive shampoos and conditioners, to curling tongs, straightening irons and hairdryers. These items, whilst you can pick up for a fiver in some supermarkets for the value offering, are top of the range. Whilst the salon may not physically own the stock, because the manufacturers supply it to them and only collect money for what is sold, they may have a responsibility to insure it.

It is therefore important, that when you are speaking to your business insurance broker (because this is the only way to get the right product at the right price) about your renewal, that you ensure that the stock sum insured is reviewed correctly. This must represent the maximum replacement cost of the stock that you have a legal (as in you own it) or a contractual (the supplier says you must cover it) responsibility to cover.

Smash and grabs are increasing. A thief that can smash a window and walk away with three or four straightening irons is going to cost you a fair few pounds to replace. But, you do not insure for the maximum possible loss, you need to insure for the cost of all your stock. Otherwise average will apply. This means, in simple terms that if you under insure, then your claim will be under paid. If you have £10,000 of stock, but only insure for £1,000, then any claims settlement will be for 1000/10,000 (one tenth) of the total cost. This applies to the claim, whatever the size. So if you lose the three or four straightening irons mentioned, then you do not get a claim settlement of £400, you only get £40.

This is something you need to understand when looking for a business insurance quote, particularly if you choose to look online, because you will not get any advice or help when using a comparison website.

Posted in business insurance quote, salon 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

So, why exactly are you looking for a business insurance quote?

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

This is a question that BIB asked a customer yesterday. The situation was that they are insured with Insurer A through a broker for 4 years. The broker had offered the same business insurance policy each year, with increases, year on year, around the 7.5% mark. The customer has just received their 1st July renewal offer, which apart form being very late, had another increase.

They had then decided to look around for another quote. BIB decided to ask them why they were looking, in the nicest possible way. The reason being that they were paying £14,000 per annum and this years renewal was offered at nearer to £15,500. The problem we face as an online business insurance broker, is that we could quite easily get a quote under the £14k mark, in fact ours was nearer to £12,000. But, when we go back to the customer we know full well that their existing broker is going to phone up to check renewal is ok in the next day or so. The customer will say that they are looking to move elsewhere and lo and behold the broker will get the holding, or current insurer, to reduce their price to either match or just beat our price.

BIB has bene around long enough to know this is life and these things happen. But, we have decided now to ask the customer why they are looking. Is it because they want to try and beat their holding broker down or are they seriously going to move their insurance cover? Because, if we don’t get some sort of commitment, why should we waste an hour or so of ours and our insurers time, just to let their existing broker retain them as a client?

We sow the seeds of discontentment to the customer. We explain that whatever we quote their broker will beat, we put that on the table early on. But, we then say that why should they give the broker the chance, because they are doing the brokers job. We let them know quote clearly that we are happy to quote, but we don’t think it is fair that we, and they, are being used bu their lazy and complacent broker.

The good thing is, that in 8 out of 10 cases, we get to keep the business!

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