Your small business is more than a simple venture. It’s your career, your income, your way of life, your personal conviction, and you want to make sure it’s protected. You make an investment into your business insurance, and you want to know that it’s working for you. That’s a fair expectation. Use these tips to make sure you are putting your commercial insurance policy to work.
Get the Right Amount of Coverage for Your Business
One of the fastest ways to lose when it comes to business insurance is not having the right amount and type of coverage. For instance, if you only have a commercial auto and commercial liability, you’ll be on the hook for covering damage to your property. Make sure your coverage protects all of your assets and is broad enough that you won’t be taxed if an incident occurs. There are a variety of commercial insurance options to choose from.
- Business Owner’s Policy (BOP): Provides essential coverage for small business owners in a single policy.
- Commercial auto: Covers any vehicle used for business purposes, such as fleet vehicles, maintenance trucks, or delivery vans.
- Commercial general liability: Protects your small business from liability associated with property damage, bodily injury, medical expenses, defense costs, personal injury, and slander.
- Commercial property: Covers any damages to your store and business assets.
- Commercial umbrella: Critical coverage that would be used during a catastrophic loss to cover damages after the maximum payout from your other policies.
- Management liability: Protects you as a small business owner from financial liability associated with professional error, such as accounting, consulting, or technology.
- Cargo: Protects your assets during transit.
- Workers' compensation: Covers medical costs when workers are hurt on the job.
You can also receive discounts by bundling policies.
Use an Insurance Broker
Insurance brokers have the ability to provide coverage options from multiple carriers so that you can choose the right price and coverage for your small business. Brokers can also provide expert consultation and tailor policies to your business’s unique needs. Working with an insurance broker will open up your options while getting the right guidance.
Keep Your Small Business Risks to a Minimum
As with any insurance policy, high-risk clients pay higher premiums. You can reduce risk in your business in a multitude of ways. Try these tips.
Remove physical obstructions from your small business. Keep walkways clear and immediately deal with any potential hazards, such as spilled water or broken glass.
Ensure all employees are properly trained. Accidents happen when employees haven’t received the right training to perform their jobs. Make sure you have a training program in place to cover all processes and procedures for your small business.
Limit knowledge to a need-to-know basis. Not all employees should see the inner workings of your business. Limit insight to what an employee needs to perform their job tasks. Similarly, they should not have access to all systems but should be limited to knowledge that is required to perform their job tasks.
Make sure you have the right security. Your property and business assets should be protected and monitored at all times to limit theft and damage. Additionally, you need to make sure you protect your company and client data. Do your due diligence to prevent any data breaches from occurring.
Keep a record of all business transactions. When it comes down to insurance claims, you’ll want to make sure you have current and accurate records to process claims easily and efficiently.
Choose the Right Deductible for Your Small Business
Your deductible is flexible. This is the amount you’ll pay before your insurance pays out on a claim. The higher your deductible, the lower your monthly premium. The trick is to find the happy place between what you can pay out of pocket when an incident occurs versus what you want to pay for monthly premiums. Choose an option that would allow your small business to keep operating should an incident occur.
Review Your Business Insurance Policy
It’s easy to fall into the relative comfort of an ongoing policy that does what it’s designed to do. But new policy options come up all the time. Review your policy each year to make sure that you haven’t missed items that don’t have coverage or that there isn’t a new policy option that better suits your business.