Archive for the ‘office insurance quote’ Category

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Office insurance package policies along with professional indemnity

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Anyone in business nowadays knows that individuals, customers and even suppliers are becoming more litigious. The law has been changed in recent years to make it easier for members of the public to pursue a claim against anyone they see fit. We have all had to see or listen to TV or Radio advertisements enticing you to take action against others. Although there has been a huge growth in the claims by individuals, we are also seeing increased activity from on business claiming against another.

One trigger for this has been the build up to the recession, the recession and it’s aftermath. When cash is tight and also king, more businesses are prone to make claims than to absorb the costs themselves. A second trigger has been the availability of legal expenses insurance. Many business insurance policies now include an element of commercial legal expenses cover as standard. It is therefore easier for businesses to pursue action, in the knowledge that they have cover in place to pay for the legal costs associated with this.

It is therefore important that you have adequate cover in force to protect you against such claims. For most office insurance policies, the legal expenses cover is included as standard. Overall limits of indemnity are usually around the £50,000 to £100,000 mark. In addition to legal expenses cover, you need to make sure that you have adequate liability insurance, both public and products liability. For most offices though, the fees or turnover are earned as a result of services that are offered. A physical product is not always provided. In these cases you need to consider, carefully, whether there is a need or requirement for professional indemnity insurance. Most of the standard package contracts will actually exclude this cover.

There are a few, and we mean few, insurers that will offer all of the covers under one contract. However, in reality it is much more competitive to get one contract for the office and one for professional indemnity. PI cover is for your professional negligence. Public and products liability operate where these is evidence of physical damage or injury. For example the computer that catches light or the person that trips over. Professional indemnity need not have evidence of a physical loss, but a financial loss. You provide advice, for a fee, and someone suffers financially if this is incorrect.

If you are worried about whether this is a requirement for your particular business, then you speak to an independent business insurance broker and get their opinion on whether this is a requirement for your business or not.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance advice, business insurance broker, office insurance, office insurance quote, professional indemnity insurance, professional indemnity insurance quote | Comments Off

Office insurance – declaring “manual” work away

Friday, December 9th, 2011

Office insurance, like pubs, restaurants, hotels, shops and salons, is something that most of the main UK commercial insurers have designed a package policy for. Rather than speaking to an insurer and saying that you need cover for contents and computers and business interruption and employers liability and public liability etc etc, insurers have package products which contain the normal covers that the particular trade would require.

For offices, the policies will include, or have the option of including, buildings, contents, stock, business computers, employers, public and products liability, money, goods in transit, portable equipment away from the premises (ie smartphones/laptops) and business interruption. This blog is concerned with public liability insurance, as part of an office package.

Public liability insurance covers your business for any accident, illness, disease or damage, caused to third party persons or property. Therefore, if someone comes to see you and trips over a loose cable, this is public liability, if you visit someone and knock a PC off a desk, this is public liability.

Now, the astute amongst you will notice that these are fairly far fetched claims and really unlikely to ever happen. But, these claims do occur, day in and day out and the cover is required. The more common cause of claims under public liability, is where there is an element of what the insurers describe as “manual work away”. Now, your definition of manual work and the insurers definition of manual work will probably differ. To add to the confusion, some insurers have different definitions of what is manual and what is clerical.

We have learned that the best thing to do is to advise the insurers of all activities to make sure you are covered correctly. In the main this will affect those office insurance policies for computer related trades. For example, we had a quote request for a computer hardware re-seller. When I asked about work away, they said they may do the odd installation. What is involved in the installation? Cabling, plugging in hardware and potentially work in a computer room. Now,. we have at least half a dozen insurers that would quote for the office package. Half of them will consider this manual work and the others will not. You are better to ensure that all of your business activities are declared. Please do not assume that your broker or insurer has a full understanding of what you do and more importantly that you are covered.

Posted in office insurance, office insurance quote, public liability insurance | Comments Off

Office insurance – trade all risks

Monday, December 5th, 2011

As the business insurance market continues to be tough, we are seeing a slightly worrying trend with the way alternative quotes are being provided. There are some people who think that a broker does not add sufficient “service” to warrant the commission that we receive. As an alternative, some people are going to the websites that “offer” to compare business insurance.

We are brokers for a lot of offices. Offices are ideally suited to dealing with their insurance, remotely, through a broker such as businessinsure. Over the 1o years we have been trading, a double digit percentage of our client base has been office package insurance. We have found that the competition for this part of our business is getting tougher and tougher. We are thankfully holding our own, but when an existing client goes on the net to look for their existing insurance renewal premium to be bettered, some of the websites do not offer like for like cover. We are faced with the phone call along the lines of “you have quoted me £x but I have a quote online for £y”. When we ask the customer to allow us the opportunity of looking at their alternative, we find out that it is not on the same basis. 

The biggest difference is that many of the alternative quotes do not include the all risks items. These are the electronic pieces of equipment that you take with you out and about and the same pieces of equipment that people drop, crack, spill coffee on and get stolen. They are the biggest source of claims. But, you would be amazed at the amount of quotes that do not include this. Whatever type of cover you have, you are more than likely going to need this type of cover. Particularly office insurance. Yes, you may be able to get a cheaper quote but you really do need to check that it is on a like for like basis. We have even had a claim for an ipad that was dropped in the bath, paid within four days by the insurers. Now, does your policy provide for that sort of cover?

Posted in business insurance quote, business insurance quotes, office insurance, office 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

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

Office insurance – product liability

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

We are seeing more and more office insurance quotes, where there is an increased product liability exposure. This occurs where an office based business is, to all intents and purposes, acting as a wholesaler. They may not actually hold the full amount of stock, as this is warehoused. What they will do is have a basic amount of day to day promotional stock. This can be anything and everything. The two quotes we have had this week have been for a farm machinery dealers office and a computer resellers.

Normally, you would approach a business insurance broker and they would get a simple, basic office quote. Now, if you are a dealer, what happens if one of the products that you supply causes injury, illness, disease or damage? You may well think that you can pass this liability on to the company that supplied the machine, or computer, or book or whatever else you sell.

However there is a potential problem. Firstly, you may not be allowed to do this contractually. Deep in the terms and conditions of the sellers may be a clause that says they are not responsible for damage or injury caused. Secondly, they may not have insurance in place and thirdly, they could go bust or out of business by the time you want to claim. Whether you like it or not, in each of these 3 scenarios, your company will be expected to pay the claim. You cannot simply rely on a basic office package to pick up your liability in this case.

You need to speak to your broker and get them to advise you as to whether you need to take out, what is effectively a contingency cover. You will need to declare your turnover, where you source the products from, where you export to and importantly, what type of products. It is not that insurers do not like imported products, but that it is much more expensive to pursue a claim against an overseas manufacturer.

Posted in business insurance, office insurance, office insurance quote, products liability insurance | Comments Off

Office insurance – stock holding

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

Online retail insurance policies prevent a bit of a difficult choice for some insurers. In the olden days, they had shop policies that were designed for high street premises or locations with a “shop front”. As the internet continues to grow, we are seeing more and more growth in the online retail area. We are not in any way saying it is easy to trade in this manner, but if you want to set up a website to trade online, for less than £100 and a few hours work, you could technically be up and running.

If you trade from home, you can usually get a home business insurance policy that covers your stock and liabilities. However, many internet retail businesses now operate from small office premises. Whether this is a sign of the recession (in that there are more office premises up for rental) or not, we can’t tell. But we are getting more and more quote requests for businesses that run a retail website, trade from an office and keep thousands of pounds worth of stock in that office.

So, do we quote it under a shop or office insurance policy? It all depends on the nature of the stock, the security and how much stock is stored. We need to be careful that you not only have cover for the stock itself (ie theft, fire, flood etc) but in addition you get the required liability cover.

We had just such an enquiry where the customer was selling fancy goods, glassware and trinkets. They said that there was no liability risk, but if we did not at leats recommend that thye took out products liability cover (which they did) then we are failing in our service to them.

Most insurers are happy to cover these types of risks under both retail and office contracts. If you are looking for a quote, please call us to discuss.

Posted in business insurance, internet retailers insurance, office insurance, office insurance quote, online business insurance quote, shop insurance | Comments Off

Office insurance – public liability at £5,000,000

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

If you are working for another company, or government body (including local authorities) you will probably find that you are asked to complete a pre-contract business insurance form.

What this asks, is that you provide details of all of the current insurance covers you have, which will need to be at the levels that the form requires. The form will contain, as an absolute minimum, the three levels of liability cover, employers, public and products.

Anyone in business will know that you must have employers liability insurance in force if you have any employees. What is less well known is that the law says this must be at a limit of indemnity any one claim of £5,000,000, whereas most insurers automatically provide this at £10,000,000. Hence, the form will state that you need £10m.

As far as public and products liability is concerned, most will request that you have a limit of £5,000,000. Whether you need this cover (at this limit) or not is immaterial, if you want the contract you need to have the cover. Most UK office insurance policies have cover automatically at £2,000,000.

The good news is that if you increase this from £2m to £5m (a 150% increase) the premium does not increase at anywhere near that sort of level. A typical small office insurance policy, that has an annual premium of £500 will only increase by 10 or 15% if the liability levels are increased.

The real costs can occur if you are asked to increase the public liability from £2m to £10m. Most insurers are only happy to provide a limit fo £5,000,000 in one “hit”. Asking them to accept the potential of £10,000,000 (albeit very rare) is too much. This is where we need to go to a different insurer to get the extra £5m. Typical premiums (annually) for this, cost around £550.

Posted in business insurance, office insurance, office insurance quote, public liability insurance | No Comments »

Office insurance

Friday, December 31st, 2010

If you are searching around for an office insurance quote, you have two simple choices. Do you go for a packaged product, specifically designed for your particular industry or trade, or for a more general product.

The answer is that you should always look for the packaged product. Over many, many years most of the UK based insurers have developed and designed many different products, for different trades from pubs to hotels. One of the packaged ones they have is for offices.

But what exactly do we mean by packaged? All this is, is the usual types of cover you would need for an office. A business insurance company will know that you may need cover for contents, computers, business interruption, legal expenses and of course, liabilities. What they do is design policies that have all these different covers available in sections. You can pick and choose certain sections, such as buildings, but most of the others are included within the standard package price.

A more general policy is one where you, in conjunction with your broker, have to pick and choose every single section, or type of cover. Now, we are not saying that a broker may miss some of these sections. But different insurers have different types of cover they provide. For example, commercial legal expenses is a specialist type of cover. So, you need to make sure that you have a policy that includes this. The chances of a claim are very very low. But, if you do have a claim it is likely to be large, in financial terms.

As with every type of policy, you get what you pay for. What your pay for is financial protection in the event of an unforeseen loss. What you do not want it is that financial protection not to be there if you haven’t managed to buy the right product in the first place.

Speak to a broker, do not risk buying the product direct yourself as you have no come back if you are missing certain sections of cover.

Posted in business insurance, business insurance broker, office insurance, office insurance quote | No Comments »

Why choose commercial combined insurance?

Thursday, November 25th, 2010

Instead of you choosing to take out a commercial combined insurance policy, the chances are that this sort of policy will actually choose you. This may be a bit confusing and the explanation is as follows.

Most of the companies in the UK that provide insurance protection, will either cover consumer led business (houses, cars, travel), or commercial for all types of business, or a combination of both.

Most will have bespoke, specially designed policies for different types of trades, for example, most will have an office insurance package or one for pubs, shops, restaurants, takeaways and hotels. If you are a manufacturer, wholesaler, importer or exporter then you will most likely need to have cover under a commercial combined policy. These policies are not necessarily bespoke. They all have a certain number of possible sections of cover, from buildings, to liabilities, to money to goods in transit and many more. Essentially you pick the sections of cover that you actually need. It is ultimately you that makes the choice of what covers you need.

You will need to consider the legally required covers, the sensible and prudent covers and the covers that you may need, such as legal expenses. This can be a daunting task, particularly when you are a new business faced with costs at every angle. When you get a quote that is in excess of a few thousand pounds you may well ask yourself is it worth paying this amount up front?

The central theme to all of our posts has always been and will remain that you should always speak to a broker about getting a quotation. A brokers job is to act as you agent (legally speaking) and they can pick and choose which insurer you get a quote from. They can also advise and help you with what covers you need or do not need.

Their advice is free and it is something that you really should consider, because they can help save you a fortune.

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

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