Running a small business require the owner to know a few things related to it. They will need to know about their products, market and a few other things like insuring their business cost effectively. Keeping the costs down is very important to stay afloat. Otherwise, businesses may struggle to make the ends meet even though they are successful in sales.
Insuring Your Business
Insurance is a great tool to control the unknown risks by passing them over to insurers. Businesses can buy policies to get protected against theft, fire, flood, other weather related damages, accidents, employee injuries and injuries and damages to public. Most insurance companies offer well thought combined policies to handle most of those risks.
Commercial combined coverage packages are suitable for most small and medium businesses. They can be bought for shops, warehouses, manufacturers, caterers and many other enterprises. They may come under different names like shop, restaurant or manufacturer packages. Whatever they may be called they serve the same purpose and consist of similar covers.
Combined Business Insurance Policies
Most insurers offer commercial insurance policies that cover most risks associated with running a business under one policy. Entrepreneurs can save money, time and get peace of mind with these packages. Here is what they would usually include:
Property
Rebuilding cost of the premises can be included in the coverage if it is owned. This will eliminate the need to insure it separately that can offer substantial savings. Some combined policies that include the building coverage too can be cheaper than buying standalone building insurance.
Stock
One of the first thing people want to insure is their stock. Generally, estimated value of the stock would be enough to cover them against the listed perils.
Goods in Transit
Most manufacturers and suppliers would have goods in transit and their commercial policy would cover it outside of their warehouses while they are on the way to customers. If the vehicle carrying them has an accident business insurers will step in to pay for the spoiled goods. The Auto insurer pays the damages to the vehicle separately.
Loss of Profit
When the premises suffer damages that prevent the business from operating the owner suffers losses and still has to pay for overheads. Overheads like wages, rent, local taxes, and leases will be covered by the insurers including reasonable loss of profits so that owners can pay their living expenses. This portion of the policy will look at historical accounts to judge the loss.
Glass
When there is shop-front it can be included to get compensation just in case glass gets smashed.
Employers Liabilities
Most countries legally require employers’ liabilities coverage. Generally a good combined policy will have more than legally required amount of liabilities coverage. It is essential in any business to make sure that employees are insured against work related injuries. Small business owners are not equipped to deal with lengthy injury claims on their own and they would be very pleased that their insurers will deal with them. Also, they wouldn’t want to run into legal problems.
Public Liability
Another essential part of business insurance policies is public liabilities coverage. When there are customers, delivery drivers and other people regularly visiting the premises it is essential to buy public liabilities coverage just in case they suffer an injury inside your shop, warehouse or factory. They may also suffer after consuming/using the products or have other problems with it.
When the property is included in the coverage this will come with property owners liability as well. It is important to point out that public liability is different from professional indemnity. Advice based businesses like accountants, solicitors and financial advisors would normally need professional indemnity policy separately.
Combined policies are comprehensive as discussed above and yet they can be very economical. It would be confusing and very expensive to insure all the above risks separately. That is why small business owners should look for them.
This article is contributed by Joe Moore of http://cheapautoinsurance.net. Joe has spent considerable time in the insurance industry before moving onto provision of auto insurance information and quotes on his blog.
Join Joe Moore @ Google+ https://plus.google.com/117528847130879120685/
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