We have all read in the past few weeks about how the last decade was really signified by debt. Consumer spending, fuelled by easy credit, resulted in a booming economy. But, like the proverbial house of cards, the weight got too much and it all came crashing to the ground.

In the long run this is, whether you believe it or not, going to be a good thing. Yes, we will have similar situations where a market, country or economy is buoyed by something, that in the cold light of day, is too good to be true.

Rising house and commercial property prices where one of the biggest causes of the debt boom. There were not many assets you could buy, use day in day out, that would appreciate in value by up to 20% per annum, year on year.

We are trying to rectify this and consumers in the UK do have wiser heads on their shoulders now. Let us see if the next decade is more of a caring, sharing one – rather than a show off one.

So, how does this affect my business insurance? Not in a nice way I’m afraid. Financial services companies, in particular insurers, have spent years investing the premiums you pay throughout the year. They are invested in some very complex vehicles, in the hope of course that they get better returns than the 2 or 3% they could have got by stashing it in a bank.

Let’s say that your cafe insurance is £1,000 per year. You pay this to the underwriter on day one of your annual policy. The insurers then invest this and hope that they will get returns nearer to double digits, than low singles. So, over the year your £1,000 becomes £1,100. Their expenses are approximately 50%, including the commission paid to any placing broker. This means that even if you have a claim, which costs 50% of your premium, they have still made a 10% return. Your premium has gone in commission, costs and claims, but the insurers can still say that they have made money.

As the economy has come crashing down, so have the returns available to insurers. This means that your £1,000 premium, which may have remained unchanged for a couple of years is going to start to creeping up.

Of course, now is the time to look round for an alternative as there are still companies out there that want your business. Basically, if you have been claims free for at least two years, do not accept an increase at renewal.

We have recently had a claim, under a retail insurance policy, where the motor on the roller shutter failed, this closed and the staff could not get out, nor the customers in.

In the past 10 or 15 years, shopping has become a leisure activity, to help satisfy this demand, every town or city has got either one or many shopping centres. Most of these are designed solely to get you, the consumer, in the doors and in a relaxed atmosphere. Part of this process is that the shops do not have front doors. The shopping centres do, but the individual shops just have a simple, lockable, roller shutter door.

As with anything mechanical, there is always the possibility that these doors, where they are mechanically controlled, will fail to operate. As the shopping centres begin to age, so do the doors and the likelihood of a motor burn out or some other problem, increases.

Roller shutters are also used more and more for simple high street shops. The risk of damage to these is also increase from malicious damage to attempted theft.

If you have a shop insurance policy, you really do need to check two things (if you have roller shutter doors).

Firstly, that the roller shutter door is separately noted as an insured item, and secondly that you have breakdown cover. Most policies will cover perils, such as theft, fire, flood etc. If your roller shutter door motor breaks down, this is not a usual “insured peril”. It needs to be covered on an engineering extension. If you don’t have this cover, you can kiss goodbye to any repairs or business interruption losses.

Speak to your broker, check your cover, if it is not right, get it sorted.

The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating. When we talk about business insurance, this relates to two things.

Firstly, the service and professionalism of any staff (either broker or insurer) that you come into contact with. And secondly, and much more importantly, what type of claims service you receive.

Whatever the insurance industry may say, claims from natural causes have been few and far between for the past dozen or so years in the UK. Yes, we have the summer floods of 2007 but apart from that, weather related claims have been thin on the ground. Even subsidence claims have reduced significantly as the great British summer has allowed the ground, particular in South East England, to not be quite so dry and parched.

In Scotland, we are being told this is the worst winter for 30 years and south of the border, it is certainly the worst winter since the early nineties.

As the thaw gets under way, we are seeing a massive, in excess of 50%, increase in the number of claims, whether for house, hotel, pub, restaurant or shop insurance they are all suffering losses. The main reason is burst pipes. Frozen water in a pipe does not take much expansion to produce a split in either a copper or a plastic pipe. As soon as the thaw occurs, the water in the pipes (which is under pressure) takes the quickest exit – which is going to be through the split or crack in the pipe.

The problem with burst pipes is that, unless you have exposed pipes, you will not see any damage until it seeps through walls or ceilings. This usually only happens once there has been significant damage. Even worse, if it is a bigger crack or split in a pipe the water does not seep out, it flows out at the same rate as any tap opened full on.

The last three weeks have seen thousands of claims being intimated and insurers usually want to see each property that has a claim to check the legitimacy of the cover, the sums insured and whether the insured has properly maintained their pipes. This in turn creates delays with clients wanting insurers to visit straight away.

We are already seeing signs of strains within one insurer with staff that can’t seem to cope. This of course impacts on us as the customer, quite rightly, sees this as our fault as we recommended the insurers in the first place.

Fingers crossed they do a bit of cross company support and the claims departments get some additional bums on seats to help deal with the influx.

Restaurant insurance policies are not a legal requirement per se. You do need to have employers liability insurance (EL) cover in place, if you have anyone working for you, whether paid, volunteers, family or friends.

Technically, you could get an EL policy on it’s own. But, insurers do not offer such a policy as they feel it is selection against them, effectively you are choosing to insure only a small part of your business risk, which can result in the largest claims.

What you need to have is a business package policy, for your particular trade. Whatever you have heard over the past few years, premiums for good quality businesses have been decreasing. Your existing insurer may not be prepared to admit it, but they are happy to price your business differently if you threaten to move.

Our challenge, for 2010, is to see if we can offer a more competitive restaurant or takeaway insurance quote for you. We are not advocating you to cancel any policies mid term, but it is always worth checking that your policy premium is in the correct “ball park”.

Over the past six months, we can count in single digits the number of quotes where we have not been able to offer cheaper cover. Usually, this is where there have been a large number of claims and understandably, new insurers price themselves out of the equation.

So, if you are kicking your heels and have a few spare minutes, call us and see what sort of price we can offer.

The risks presented by a normal, residential house are considered by many people to be exactly the same, whether the house is owner occupied or let to a third party.

However, in the eyes of UK residential and commercial building insurance companies, they differ a great deal.

For this reason, you have two main types of insurance for houses. A standard home insurance policy, which covers the buildings and contents, taken out by the owner of the property (including if mortgaged) is the first. The second type of policy is one that covers all other types of dwelling which are occupied by people other than those that actually own, or have a financial interest in, the property.

If you own a property, whether as a buy to let or some other reason, that you do not occupy and let out, then you need to get a separate landlord insurance policy. The reason being, that insurers categorise, and price, houses that are let out differently to those that you occupy yourself.

This is based on years and years of statistics. Think of the bigger, brand name, insurers. They have been insuring houses for in excess of 100 years in some cases, through one guise or another. They know that if you live in a house, the claims ratio (number and severity of losses) is going to be less than the ratio for let houses. We cannot argue with these statistics as it will not change the insurers minds as they are in business to make a profit.

What we can do, is to look around for alternatives, this is the way to save yourself money, because some insurers, as you would expect, offer better, more competitive pricing for properties that are let. With the internet, this is much easier than it has ever been before. Buy to let insurance is the best search term because this will throw up brokers that specialise in this area. We always suggest it is best to give them a call, rather than rely on an online form, this way you can discuss all of the options available.

Yes, a very poor title I will admit, but it is making a very valid point. We provide business insurance quotes, that is our bread and butter and we do it very well. One of the main difficulties we have is that we not selling a tangible product.

Sure, we are selling a service, in the same way that a solicitor, accountant or lawyer does, but at least you can see and experience their service. You know you need a solicitor to make your house purchase smooth, you need an accountant to stop Mr A Darling grabbing more than he deserves from your hard earned salary or if you are having a bit of legal bother you get your lawyer involved.

But, when you look around for pub, hotel or restaurant insurance you are searching for a product that you cannot see, feel, touch or experience. Until, on unless, you have a claim. If you are fortunate enough to not have a claim then it can be a bitter pill to swallow having to fork out hundreds, if not thousands of pounds when you are not getting, what you perceive is, a real return.

The service we are selling is one that you don’t want to buy, don’t want to pay for and ultimately, don’t even want to use. How easy is that to sell? Thankfully, it is not too difficult because sensible business people realise there is a requirement for cover.

What is happening more and more though, and is causing concern, is that people are cutting down on their cover. This is starting to cause problems as people are starting to putting in claims and then realising that the cover they thought they had (say, fixed glass cover) is not in place because they pared their cover down to save money.

Whilst I cannot guarantee it, I can be 99.99% sure that any business that has been insured for 3 or more years and has a good claims record, will be able to get a cheaper quote at renewal, for the same, if not more, cover.

The secret is to get an independent broker to do the donkey work for you.

Yes, a very poor title I will admit, but it is making a very valid point. We provide business insurance quotes, that is our bread and butter and we do it very well. One of the main difficulties we have is that we not selling a tangible product.

Sure, we are selling a service, in the same way that a solicitor, accountant or lawyer does, but at least you can see and experience their service. You know you need a solicitor to make your house purchase smooth, you need an accountant to stop Mr A Darling grabbing more than he deserves from your hard earned salary or if you are having a bit of legal bother you get your lawyer involved.

But, when you look around for pub, hotel or restaurant insurance you are searching for a product that you cannot see, feel, touch or experience. Until, on unless, you have a claim. If you are fortunate enough to not have a claim then it can be a bitter pill to swallow having to fork out hundreds, if not thousands of pounds when you are not getting, what you perceive is, a real return.

The service we are selling is one that you don’t want to buy, don’t want to pay for and ultimately, don’t even want to use. How easy is that to sell? Thankfully, it is not too difficult because sensible business people realise there is a requirement for cover.

What is happening more and more though, and is causing concern, is that people are cutting down on their cover. This is starting to cause problems as people are starting to putting in claims and then realising that the cover they thought they had (say, fixed glass cover) is not in place because they pared their cover down to save money.

Whilst I cannot guarantee it, I can be 99.99% sure that any business that has been insured for 3 or more years and has a good claims record, will be able to get a cheaper quote at renewal, for the same, if not more, cover.

The secret is to get an independent broker to do the donkey work for you.

Strategic Risk reports here that commercial insurance buyers continued to enjoy favourable (decreasing) prices in the last quarter of 2009.

As we have reported before, the insurers have been trying to talk the market up and get premiums on an upward curve but when push comes to shove they are not following through. Sure, the bosses and shareholders of the insurers would love to see increased revenue, but they have to face the realities of low claims ratios.

They have also had to accept that there are less businesses around and they continue to fight for business. We had a pub insurance policy due for renewal on the 12th January, overall premium last year was just a shade over £3,000. The existing company wanted to increase by nearly 5% as a result of index-linked increases to the business buildings insurance portion of the cover.

A quick check on two alternatives showed the market figure was nearer £2,500. We advised the holding company and they immediately capitulated and offered at £2,400 because they want to keep profitable business.

It is also reported that brokers incomes are reducing because, in the main, they earn fees as commission in placed cover. The credit crunch and worldwide recession was a perfect storm for the banking community. We are in the midst now of the insurance equivalent. Whilst we will not see insurers or brokers going to the wall, some will fall by the wayside through below market value mergers and acquisitions throughout 2010.

It has been reported by Insurance Times that the Financial Services Authority, is looking to apply massive, 100%+, increases in the fees paid by some personal and business insurance brokers.

Whilst at this stage it is just proposals you do just have to sit back and wonder which floor in the ivory tower they had the meeting when they decided this might be a good idea?

Given the exceptional problems that have occurred in the financial community world wide over the past 24 months, you only need to look at insurance brokers to realise that there are some financial services firms that operate quite nicely.

Brokers perform the same role that they always have done. We are now coming up to the fifth anniversary of FSA regulation. Of course, it was nto welcomed with open arms, but we rolled our sleeves up and got on with it. Whatever they asked for, we did. Yes we debated and argued the point on a few strange suggestions, but on the whole in the past 5 years we have done very well.

It looks now as if we are being penalised due to the exceptional costs that the FSA has had in changing from it’s soft touch regulation on the banks. It would be nice, in a Daily Mail reader type of way, if some of the billions of pounds that wil be raised in the one off bankers tax could go back into the body that was supposed to regulate them, but dreaming is something I do not have time for.

Maybe in the face of complaints the FSA will listen, with inflation where it is, 100% increases on fees really does look out of place, does it not?

What does this really mean? Usually it evokes images of old fashioned factory style buildings or modern concrete block and steel industrial units.

But, at the highest level you can split properties into two types. Those used for residential purposes (whether owner occupied or not) and all others.  Everything that falls into the “all others” category can usually be covered under a commercial property insurance policy. In addition to everything that fall under the all others umbrella there are properties which would normally be covered under a residential property owners insurance policy which are more suited to a commercial package.

For example, long term unoccupied or untenanted, those undergoing refurbishment, those where significant rental income is  received from tenants are all the types of buildings that are better covered on a commercial basis.

The other key thing to mention is that you do not have to earn an income or a profit from a building to cover it on a commercial basis. If your policy is due for renewal, it wouldn’t do any harm to speak to an broker, explain the risks, and let them come back to you with different options.

The reason for speaking to a broker is because it is so easy nowadays to get an alternative quote. Gone are the days when it took days and you could only get a quote from one company after filling in a proposal form. In 2010, you just need to stick your search term into Google, choose UK (as you need a UK insurer to cover you) and find a broker that has a website you feel confident with and, most importantly, check that they are independent. If not, you are just getting products from one or a very restricted range of insurers which, if you are looking for alternatives, is as useful as a chocolate fireguard.