Administrator, Author at Small Business Insider

Small Business Insurance Top Tips

Posted on July 2, 2017 Written by Administrator

When looking for small business insurance, note that not all insurance providers offer the same elements of cover, nor the same levels of protection. The premiums may differ and you have to choose cover that is appropriate for your particular type of business. Here are some tips when choosing insurance for your business.

bear in mind that insurance can be offered based on your particular business. For insurance there is retail insurance, tradesman insurance, shop insurance etc – virtually for just about any type of business you might think of;
when looking for insurance you might want to ensure that you have adequate third party liability insurance within the business cover. This is needed to protect you and your business against claims brought about through a third party getting injured on your premises. The same applies if you have members of staff working for you. Claims may arise if they were to get hurt at work. Employers’ liability insurance is mandatory for most employers;
flood and fire may damage or even destroy your stock on the premises. If you suffered a fire you may end up losing all of your stock and fittings and fixtures in the premises. This may add up to a considerable amount of money. Small business insurance typically protects against a loss such as this, up to set limits;
the above may also damage the building in which you house your business and it may have to shut down for refurbishment. If this happens you stand to lose not only the costs of repairs to the shell of the building but also loss of customers, unless you have cover in place;

Finally when considering small business insurance you may wish to check out the terms and conditions that come with the insurance policy. This is where you are able to find out what the business cover entails, doesn’t entail and any obligations that may form part of the contract between you and the insurance provider.

A Quick Guide To Business Insurance

Posted on July 2, 2017 Written by Administrator

Any guide to business insurance is unlikely to offer an entirely comprehensive review of the whole subject. The combinations and permutations of the various elements that might go into making up any given insurance package might prove as seemingly endless as the types of business organisation in existence in the UK.

The good news in all of these possibilities, however, is that – whatever your particular line of business – you are likely to be able to find the cover that suits your particular needs and circumstances.

The following information is designed to help you identify that particular package, so that you pay only for the cover you specifically need, and therefore secure critical insurance for the business you are running.

Do remember, however, to always seek help and advice from a professional if you are not entirely sure which product is suitable for you.

What is likely to be covered?

If every enterprise is likely to be different, with unique needs and requirements when it comes to insurance, is it possible to define some of the underlying components typical to businesses at large?

Fortunately, the answer is yes – and the common features of the typical business insurance package are what help to inform this particular guide.

In a nutshell, these are likely to be divided into two main categories of risk – the liabilities to which your business may be exposed and cover for the various financial investments you may have made. Specifically, therefore, you might be considering:

public liability – a general duty of care you owe not only to your clients or customers, but also to members of the public who might otherwise have chosen to have no connection at all with your business. Nevertheless, you owe any individual a duty of care – and business insurance typically includes your indemnity against any such claims;
professional liability – if you have made it your business, then a particular test may be made when it comes to assessing the reasonableness of your duty of care towards your customers. Because it is your business, in other words, the law might expect a higher standard of care with respect to the advice, guidance or information you offer. Business insurance packages might indemnify you against such claims;
employers’ liability – if you employ any staff in the running of your business, you may also have a legal responsibility for ensuring that they are covered by your employers liability insurance;
in addition to indemnity against any such liabilities, of course, business insurance also typically extends to those more tangible items in which you may have invested – and upon which your business depends;
these may range from the business premises themselves, to stock in hand, stock in transit, cash held on the premises, or the interruption of business earnings following the occurrence of an insured event.

Buying it

Given the potentially very wide range of risks that may or may not need to be covered, therefore, you might want to consider enlisting the help of a specialist provider in this kind of insurance, whose background and experience might assist you in securing the cover you need at a price you may be able to afford.

Types of business insurance

There are probably as many different types of business insurance as there are different types of business.

As the business owner or manager, therefore, your priority is likely to be one of identifying the type of business insurance cover most closely suited to your particular needs and circumstances.

Nevertheless, it may be possible to group different types of policy according to categories of business – thereby also illustrating the very wide range of endeavours typically covered by this form of insurance:

Business types

one of the more obvious ways of distinguishing different types of business, for instance, may be to look at the premises – whether it be a workshop, restaurant or shop, for example – and to consider the relevance of insurance in protecting those premises against some of the most common risks such as fire, flooding, storm damage, impacts, vandalism and theft;
alternatively, it may be possible to group enterprises according to the types of goods or services being offered. Different types of insurance, for example, may be appropriate to a shop or restaurant with particular types of goods for sale, compared to the business that essentially sells services – such as consultancies, accountants, solicitors or other professionally qualified sources of advice and guidance;
whatever the precise type of business for which you may be responsible, however, there is one aspect of cover likely to take pride of place – indemnity against a range of liabilities which may threaten not only the enterprise’s financial well-being, but its very existence;
included under this heading may be your public liability, your professional liability, a liability for the products you sell, and a liability towards any employees you may hire to help run your business;
each of these potential liabilities is considered in more detail throughout this guide, but with the possibility of claims amounting to several millions of pounds, it may be seen that liability insurance plays a central and critical role in the typical business insurance package.

Getting bespoke business insurance cover

Despite the huge range of different types of business – each with typically very particular insurance needs and requirements – you may be surprised by the number of general insurance providers claiming to offer the specific cover you need.

If you are concerned about finding the type of cover specifically tailored to your particular business needs and circumstances, therefore, you might want to choose a specialist provider with particular expertise in arranging insurance for your particular type of business and a close working relationship with those insurers providing cover in your sector of the market.

Conclusion

Although there may be many providers eager to secure your business, therefore, you might want to spend more than a moment or two considering the added value a specialist provider might bring to your search for appropriate business insurance.

What Is Corporate PMI?

Posted on July 2, 2017 Written by Administrator

Corporate PMI is private medical medical insurance arranged by a company for medical health cover on behalf of its employees.

The existence of corporate PMI in any remuneration package is likely to be regarded by employees as far more than an everyday perk of the job, but something genuinely worth having and something that possibly sets one company above another as an attractive place to work. Private medical insurance, in other words, can be a valuable incentive for the recruitment and retention of staff.

From the employer’s point of view, corporate PMI offers an opportunity for:

incentivising employees and maintaining heightened morale in the work place;
helping to manage sickness absences;
ensuring that employees who do fall ill and need time off from work can nevertheless receive quality medical attention promptly, so that they are able to return to work after a minimum period of absence; and
generally maintaining an image of and corporate reputation for responsible and caring attitudes towards the workforce.

With such a range of advantages for employers and employees alike, these types of company-based medical insurance schemes increasingly feature in remuneration packages. Thanks to their flexibility and the ability to tailor many corporate PMI schemes to suit the scale and needs of a particular company and its workforce, large numbers of employees are now sharing the benefits of private health cover.

Professional Indemnity Insurance Explained

Posted on July 1, 2017 Written by Administrator

Professional liability cover might form the central plank of many types of business insurance. The extent to which it might help safeguard your own particular enterprise, of course, may depend on just what goods and services you provide.

To help determine whether this might be the kind of protection you need, therefore, the following addresses a number of questions:

what exactly does professional indemnity insurance do?
what types of business might benefit from such cover?
where might you buy it?
does your occupation demand that you are legally obliged to have this cover?

The aim and purpose of professional indemnity insurance

Essentially, this type of cover is designed to indemnify you against allegations of professional negligence and the claims for compensation that may follow.

The extent of any such claim, of course, depends on the severity of the alleged negligence and the monetary value of the damages suffered. Claims of professional negligence, however, may assume quite considerable proportions. In view of this risk, indemnity is commonly offered for claims of up to £5 million or more.

Who needs it?

If, in the course of your business, you offer:

any kind of advice or information, on which your customer acts (by doing something or not doing something) and that action subsequently results in loss or damage, you may be held liable for professional negligence;
that test of negligence of course depends on what it would be reasonable for you to know in the normal course of your business – for example, advice on domestic wiring if you are an electrician, or financial advice if you are an accountant;
if you lay claim to certain qualifications relevant to the services you offer, then the test of negligence may be stricter (given the greater knowledge and understanding you may be assumed to possess);
in order to gain membership of some professional institutions, you may be required to hold what the regulatory body considers to be an adequate level of professional indemnity insurance;
although some types of business – such as accountancy or other consultancy practices, for example – might be obvious examples where professional indemnity insurance may be called for, there are others (fitness instructors or personal trainers, for instance) where this form of protection may also be warranted.

Professional liability insurance may be an essential component of the cover needed for your business. It may not be relevant to every type of enterprise, but wherever there is some risk of a claim of professional negligence, indemnity may clearly prove worthwhile.

Chinese Restaurant Insurance

Posted on July 1, 2017 Written by Administrator

You may be running a restaurant that trades on the mysterious and exotic flavours of the Far East, but when it comes to insurance, your business is likely to be as vulnerable as any other to a whole range of risks encountered by those in the catering industry.

What are some of those risks and how might insurance help protect you and your restaurant business against them?

Public liability

as the restaurant owner, UK law holds that you owe a duty of care not only towards your customers, but also towards ordinary members of the public that may interact in some way with your business;
what this means in practice is that if anyone – a customer or a member of the public – suffers an injury or has their property lost or damaged in any way that might be related to your business, you may be held liable;
if you are subsequently judged to be liable, you may then be ordered to pay compensation to the injured party or parties;
the possible scenarios for any such injury, loss or damage are probably too numerous to mention, but your liability for restitution may amount to many thousands, not to say hundreds of thousands, of pounds;
indemnity against such public liability claims, therefore, is a typical, core component of Chinese restaurant insurance;

Employers liability

where you have a duty of care towards members of the public, that duty increases many times over when it comes to your responsibilities and obligations towards your staff;
indeed, the law of England and Wales holds – in all but a few rare exceptions – that you need to hold employers liability insurance in respect of any staff you employ;
this is designed to ensure that you are able to meet any claims made by your employees with respect to injuries, illness or other loss or damage suffered during their employment in your restaurant;
on occasion, the effects of any such illness or injury may not become apparent until many years after the employee’s service;
it is by no means unusual, therefore, for your restaurant insurance to include employers liability cover for up to £10 million;

Product liability

whilst public liability and employers liability cover are likely to be among your major areas of concern, you may also want to consider financial protection against your liability for the foods you serve;
product liability insurance, therefore, may be a further element of cover offered by insurance plans for Chinese restaurants.

Conclusion

Whether safeguarding your general responsibilities towards customers and members of the public, your employees, or the food that you serve, therefore, suitable insurance may make the difference between your restaurant business being able to weather a temporary storm and surviving well into the future.

Benefits Of Business Insurance

Posted on July 1, 2017 Written by Administrator

Anyone who owns their own business whether big or small may be able to benefit from business insurance. In fact without taking out protection for your business you may be leaving yourself wide open for financial ruin if the worst were to happen. So what is insurance for businesses?

The many risks

As a business owner you are typically at risk from many areas. Examples of these include:

damage to the contents or shell of the building you hold your business in;
events such as fire and flooding.

These are just the more common risks associated with a business and some of the things that may be included in a standard business insurance policy. Of course, as with any type of insurance, what you actually get in the policy depends on the insurance provider, the type of business you are insuring, and the level of insurance you choose to take out.

Liability insurance

Bear in mind that if you run a business that involves the public coming into your shop or premises, then public liability insurance has to be considered. Imagine the costs that may be involved if a member of the public were to slip on the floor on your premises. The legal costs might add up to thousands of pounds and if you do not have insurance behind you, this money has to come out of your livelihood. In the worse case, it may even mean that you have to sell your business to come up with the money.

Employers’ liability insurance may also be legally required if you employ staff in the workplace. This typically works on the same principle. If a member of staff were to suffer an injury or death whilst on your premises legal costs may mount up. With this in mind when looking for business insurance you may wish to check whether you have both public liability insurance and employers’ liability insurance included, and if so that the policy limits are suitable.