One of the many growth areas over the past five to ten years is for online retailers. Many people find it easier to shop from a laptop in the early hours rather than face the hoards on a Saturday.
This means that a growth area for us is people asking for an online retail insurance quote. You would think, as a lay person, that there would be many competitively priced products from the main insurers. Alas, no. Many have their own specific retail products, but these will usually specify somewhere that the business must be trading from a retail premises. If not, then technically they are saying that it is business that cannot be insured on their package product.
Some of them will be prepared to do this on a separate contract, but at a higher cost. Our argument has always been that there really is no difference, in the insurance risks, from an online retailer to a “bricks and mortar” retailer. In fact, the online ones present much less of a public liability insurance risk because there are no real customers wandering around the premises slipping, tripping and claiming.
The online one may present more of a theft risk if they are in a remote industrial estate, but these are few and far between and the risk can be minimised or mitigated by the business insurance company insisting on an intruder alarm.
We are not saying that you should always get the cheapest product possible, but a high street shop with £10,000 stock should really be paying the same as an online retailer in the same street, but trading from an upper floor office. The way to make sure that you get these type of quotes, is to go to a broker. The broker understands which insurers are more flexible, more understanding, have better products and ultimately the better prices.