For new employees, unfamiliar with working practices and trying to learn new things and working methods every day, the likelihood of an accident is vastly increased. The HSE have a role to try and prevent work place accidents, their website has a huge amount of relevant information for you to peruse and help you. It may seem daunting at first, but even basic steps are worth taking. There are of course things that you as an employer will do day in and day out without even thinking about. Your new employee though may need to be shown many many times before they get it right.

In addition to being patient and taking tome to tech, re-teach and teach again, you need to have employers liability insurance in case there is an accident. In 1969 legislation was passed, which has been revised many times since, which states that you must have adequate insurance in force in case an employee has an accident, suffers and illness or catches a disease for which you could be held liable. Employers liability insurance is one of the strictest covers out there. What this means, for the commercial insurance companies, is that you cannot have many exclusions, warranties, restrictions, excesses or conditions.

If you need the cover, you need to speak to an independent business insurance broker to get them to look around on your behalf to get you the best type of cover at the most competitive price.

A fair proportion of  our business is property owners. We do not differentiate at all, the only thing we cannot do is a home that you occupy yourself, this is better suited to a domestic, or personal, insurer. Even the larger commercial and business insurance companies will split their companies into two, one for the business side and one for the domestic. There is a problem though in going to a domestic insurer for an empty house that you are looking to insure. Why? Because most of them will have restrictions about insuring a property that is empty for more than 30, 45 or 60 days. Instead of applying restrictions, the cover simply ceases.

The reason for sticking with us is, that a business insurance broker will be able to get an annual unoccupied quote for you. Businessinsure can even get wider cover to include storm, flood, theft and malicious damage. You will not get cover for glass, sanitaryware, loss of rent, accidental damage or burst pipes though.

So whether it is an empty house, factory, restaurant, shop or industrial unit, we can get a quote for you. We can usually turn quotes around within an hour or so. Therefore, even if your existing provider has hit you with a massive premium increase at the last minute, come to Businessinsure and we’ll see what we can do. We are not naive, or should we say daft, enough to say that we will beat any other quote. What we will do is our best, for you. You can then rest assured in the knowledge that at least you have found out what the ball park is, price and cover wise. You can then choose whether or not you want to move insurer.

This is the whole raison d’etre of Businessinsure. We knew there was a gap in the market, and that the gap in the market was never going to get smaller. As more and more businesses are run by techno-savvy people, with less and less time on their hands, the will turn to the net to get a better price. This is what we do and this is what we do well, when we talk about a better price though, we also look for comparable, if not better, cover. Whilst we cannot provide exact stats, we can confidently state that in over 85% of cases we are able to get a better price for the same, or better, cover for all the businesses that contact us.

But, our skill and speed at doing this is sometimes our downfall. The reason being that some customers who still deal with a broker “around the corner” are sometimes dealing with a broker that can be complacent. When that broker comes under pressure, ie their customer says I am moving elsewhere at renewal, they hit “panic mode”. We quoted for an importer of scientific equipment. Their existing broker had offered a renewal at 16% more than the previous year, with the same commercial insurance company, and had said that there were no alternatives (at a better price). We managed to get a quote within 24 hours that shaved 12% of their premium last year, saving them around 27% on this offer.

But, when the customer spoke to their broker, he awoke from his slumber and lazily phoned the holding, or current insurer, to let them know they were going to lose a £9,000 insurance renewal. The holding insurer simply matched our quote. The broker then told the customer that because we were remote (the customer was in Southampton, we are in Perth and their broker was in Portsmouth) we would never get the same service. This is from a broker that couldn’t be bothered to look around for a decent renewal premium. Unfortunately, for us, the customer swallowed this and the broker retained the business.

You can now see where I am going to. A local broker is not always the best answer, some of them have just got very lazy and very complacent. We can offer a similar service, particularly in times of a loss. Most insurers will appoint an adjuster anyway, so the service the broker provides, “on the ground” is minimal anyway.

If you want to be one of the 85% of customers who save money, give us a call today!

What this means is that they are all chasing an ever decreasing number of clients. Those insurers that have clients are also suffering because, contrary to what their actuaries are probably saying, they are not increasing their premiums to make up for their increased losses and reduced investment income. What they are doing is having to depress some of their prices just to keep customers, profitable ones, on their books.

So what does this bode for the industry as a whole? We have been here before, in the late 90’s and the start of the millennium which led to one of the bigger, growing, insurers (Independent) going bust. I worked for a large commercial insurance company at the time and one of the tasks I worked on in the “strategy” team, was to produce a report for senior management on exactly how the Independent  was doing so well. The company was the stock market darling with it’s share price seemingly knowing no limits. The rest of us in the industry could only look on in wonder. They were picking up insurer of the year awards, picking up big clients and some of the best staff in our company went to work for them.

Then, as we all know now, the truth came out and the Independent crashed. There where rumours, trials and a lot of their staff ended up with worthless shares. The question we are asking is, who is going to be next? We have our ideas but of course we cannot go into print because without hard evidence we are going to be screwed into the ground for making libel. There are a few companies out there who, in the cold light of day, when you sit down and look at where they are now compared to where they were five or ten years ago have grown very fast. The ones we are thinking about have all been involved in either motor or liability insurance. Both of these classes of business are susceptible to what are called long tail claims. These are the claims that go on for years and years and cost an absolute fortune. If the insurers are not careful and do not reserve adequately for these claims, then they will turn around and bite them on the bum later on.

One analyst has gone into print about one large insurer saying that they think they are not adequately reserved. The insurer has categorically refuted these suggestions but, at the end of the day, the analyst must have thought long and hard about this before going to print. We need to sit down and see what the Financial Services Authority is going to do. They rightly got a very bad press about the problems with the banks, here’s hoping that they keep a closer eye on the insurers. As a business insurance broker we have to be careful about who we choose to recommend to our clients. We cannot rely solely on what we read in the press, it is about time the FSA categorised insurers along the same lines as the ratings agencies.

For example, with your business insurance, if you know that you have cover in force then this will usually be enough to satisfy you until such time as you receive the policy in the post later on. So what can you expect, for example, if you submitted a form or phoned for a quote at 10am on  a Monday morning? We will answer this question based on the enquiry being for a packaged product, for example a pub, shop, hairdresser, office or similar.

When we receive a phone call, we would normally spend up to 10 minutes gaining the required information. We have to provide a quotation to customers that, in our professional opinion, covers their Demands and Needs. Whilst we can only base our response on what information we are actually provided with, we have to work on the basis of giving them the best cover for the best premium. Once we have undertaken our fact find process, we are then able to approach our panel of commercial insurance companies for a quote. We were saying earlier on about expectations of time. The fact that most, not all, insurers have some form of autoquote facility online makes our job so much easier. We can, in the majority of package cases, get a quotation within ten or fifteen minutes of that first phone call. We do however give ourselves leeway so that we can refer back to insurers for a more competitive quotation.

Give or take, you should be able to send and receive and get an email from us, with a fully compliant quote, within one hour of first picking up the phone to us. Of course, some cases will involve much more time and we will always let you know the estiamted timescales for turning around a quote. As always, phoning us is the key as you get to speak to an independent business insurance professional.

During 2006 to 2008 as the recession kicked in, we started to see even these new companies not picking up quite the market share they wanted. They had to price ever more cheaply to even get some business on the books. All commercial insurance companies, whether they like it or not are in a cyclical industry. The more the competition the cheaper the prices until we get to the bottom of the cycle, or near to it. When we are at the bottom of the cycle, the insurers do one of two things. They either exit the market or they increase their premiums.

We are just starting to see the bottom of the cycle approaching. Of the five or six insurers we have agencies with, 2 have exited the market and the others are starting to get tough on the business they accept. We have one insurer that will not accept any Indian takeaway insurance or kebab takeaway insurance business. This is purely because their loss ratios are higher, whether this is because their windows get smashed or there are fires.

We do still have good markets to approach thankfully. If you need a quick, cheap quote, give us a call today.

At it’s most basic level, if you have an employee and they are injured and you have been proven negligent, you will, as an employer, be liable. If your employee, or ex employee, appoints a solicitor you can expect a claim to be in excess of £10,000 even for the most basic of injuries. We have one claim on the go, where an employee fell of the third rung of a ladder, which is sitting at £107,000 estimate. The employee borrowed the ladder from a customer which was strictly against their training, but the claim still stands.

We have another where an employee, to try and get their work completed quickly, stuck tape over the safety switch for a machine that cut paper and lost 3 fingers. Without the employee doing this, the injury would not have occurred. That one is just over £750,000.

With these two claims, the employee contributed to the claim. You would think that this would result in either the claim being turned down or reduced significantly. But, we said it is subject to strict regulation and the claims simply proceed. The insurers estimate that the claims may be reduced by between 3 and 5% because of the employee contributing 100% to the injury.

If you are trading without business insurance cover, you really do need to get something sorted out, soon. Whilst you never would expect to have a claim, you would be surprised at what it can do to your businesses survival prospects if you have decent insurance behind you.

If you need a quote, speak to an independent business or commercial insurance broker and at least be aware of the costs that you would expect to pay.

With business insurance, things are slightly different. There are similarities with physical products, in that the cost differences are great. Commercial insurer A may offer a policy for £500 whereas Commercial insurer B will offer a policy for £750. As a broker, we can tell, and it is our job to know, the difference between the policies. We can therefore say, with confidence that policy A is a better option, not only because it is cheaper, but because the terms, conditions, excesses and warranties are the same, or very similar to policy B.

But, we only know this because it is our job. We do this day in and day out. We deal with quotes, policies, changes, alterations and claims. We know what is good and what is bad. For you, as the customer though it is not quite so easy.

The first step is for you to decide exactly what business or commercial insurance you actually need. If you go to our site, this will give you a start to decide what types of cover you may need or must have.

If you need some genuine free advice, you can always give us a call on 08456 024 589.

In case you are in the dark, if you have an accident, in your car, your insurers will more than likely sell your name and contact details (yes, amazingly it is legal) to solicitors. The solicitors contact you to pursue a claim in your behalf against the third parties insurers.

Now, we have all seen the adverts that offer to help the poor member of the public that has been injured. Unfortunately, many of these solicitors charge over 50% of the ultimate settlement costs. This is not from you but from the 3rd party insurers. So, you might £10,000 for a broken arm and banged head, but the solicitors that deal with this for you will get around the same in fees. This is how they can afford to pay £100’s in referral fees.

The food chain is long and between the 3rd paty insurers and you, there are many different parties all taking their cut, at very, very high rates. This has to be paid for somehow and it is the customers that contribute through increased premiums.

The insurers are then looked upon as the villains of the piece, because everyone moans about increased insurance premiums. They are the partial villains, because without them selling your details, there would not be so many claims. Of course the solicitors and other third parties in the chain do not help and can be equally accused of villany. The fact that Jack Straw and David Cameron have been involved, even if just to give soundbites, means that this story will run and run.

Fingers crossed that they are deemed to be illegal as they do nto help the people who matter, the claimants. As a business insurance broker, we are regularly asked that we do not sell peoples details on to others, we do not do this, never have and never will, how the insurers are allowed to do this defeats me.

I have not met a solicitor yet who will admit it, but the vast majority of their earnings come from the smaller claims, which the commercial insurance companies are more than happy to settle, without going to court. These are usually sub £10,000. The claimant gets roughly, and sometimes less than, half the total claims cost and the solicitors usually get the lions share. Once you go beyond a certain monetary figure, the insurers decide that they will fight the case and this is where the solicitors start to waiver, ever so slightly.

Whilst the skeleton of the claim they are making, on a claimants behalf, is more than likely to be genuine, it is the way it is spun out and made to be worse than it is, that is having an effect on our industry. But that is another blog point entirely.

This one is about products liability insurance and extending cover for exports to North America and Canada. If you are making widgets and decide to export to the United States or Canada, the chances are your current business insurance policy will exclude cover for this.

If your insurers are happy to do this, you will find that the cost of your insurance will rocket skywards. It may well be that your current insurers do not want the business as many simply do not have the skills or capabilities to deal with this type of cover.

Why is this? Thinking about the scenarios above, a £10,000 claim might be if an employee injures themselves and is off work for a few weeks. There does not have to be broken bones or hospital stays for there to be a multi-thousand pound claim. A similar claim in the US under workmens compensation (the US equivalent of employers liability insurance) would be 6 to 10 times higher.

This typically applies to all liability claims. So, if your widget damages someones business property here, due to faulty manufacture for example, the claim will be 6 to 10 times less than if the damage was caused in the US and the claim was pursued through the US courts.