Insurance Matters and Your Business

Regardless of the type of business you own and operate, you'll need insurance in order to protect yourself, your business, you employees, and even your clients. How do you know what type of insurance you need? Well, business insurance can be very complicated! For starters, ally yourself with a good insurance agent or broker. He or she should be able to do most of the legwork for you. A qualified agent or broker will ensure that you don't spend too much time on trying to figure out what you need, purchase the wrong insurance, or pay too much for it. To find a good agent, ask other business owners for recommendations, or check with your local Chamber of Commerce.

Liability Insurance

General business liability insurance protects you and your business for anything perilous that might happen as a result of your products and services, even things that might happen beyond your control. It ensures a company against accidents and injury that might occur on the business property, as well as against any accidents or injuries that might occur as a result of the products or services sold. Liability insurance will protect you from product misuse, third-party damage, and service misunderstandings should they crop up. Your agent can help you find the type of liability insurance that protects our specific business.

Professional liability insurance is a specialized liability insurance geared toward professionals who routinely give advice. This policy will protect you and your company should a client decide to sue you for negligence. In some states professional liability insurance is mandatory for people of certain professions, and you can't run your business without it. Historically, professional liability insurance has been carried by doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, and accountants. Now, however, it is common for any type of business professional or consultant to carry this type of insurance. Do you charge a fee for advice of other type of professional services? Then you should give serious thought to having this type of insurance.

Product liability insurance may be necessary if you manufacture a product. This type of insurance is designed to protect your business and your clients should your product malfunction and cause property damage or bodily injury. Even if you don't manufacture the product, you may need product liability insurance. Talk to your agent about whether you situation calls for this type of insurance.

Property Insurance

Property insurance will cover your business's buildings and structures in the event of theft, fire, vandalism, flood, earthquake, and other acts of God and malicious damage. Property insurance is a good starting point for most businesses, but you will most likely have to add riders in order to protect your particular inventory. What riders you add will depend upon the type of business you run.

Employee Insurance

As your employees are your biggest asset, you'll have to arrange for insurance for them, as well. Depending upon your company's size, one of the benefits you offer may be health insurance. Group health insurance rates allow for discounted prices. How do they work? Basically, you pick up part of the cost of insuring your employees' health, and they pick up the remainder through deductions in their paychecks.

Disability insurance protects your employees should they become sick or hurt and unable to work. It is usually not mandatory for businesses to offer disability insurance to their workers, although it is a benefit that attracts and retains employees.

Workers' compensation insurance is mandatory by federal law. It protects employees injured on the job by providing short- and sometimes long-term financial benefits. It also covers all medical costs, as well as rehabilitation costs, associated with the on-the-job injury. Workers compensation premiums are dependent upon industry classifications. Basically, the more dangerous the work, the higher the premiums.

Other Types of Insurance

There are several other types of insurance you might want to consider, depending upon the type of business you run.

Key person insurance is a type of insurance that can be taken out on people that are key to the running of your organization. How do you know if you need this type of insurance? Well, if a key person in your business were not able to work any more because of death or disability, is it likely that you business would suffer financially? If the answer is "yes," you might want to consider this type of insurance.

If you are the sole proprietor of a business, and it is your only source of income, you might want to consider business interruption insurance. Just like it sounds, this type of insurance protects you if your business is interrupted as a result of things like fire, damage, theft of inventory or equipment, etc.

Insuring your business correctly is key! Talk to a licensed agent or broker about your needs.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------If you are a business owner get listed at Best Repair Site, part of Localwin Network.