You Do Have Business Insurance, Don't You?
Business Insurance
Business insurance protects the contents of your business against fire, theft and other losses. It's best to speak with your insurance agent about the specific types of insurance that YOUR business needs. Some types of coverage are required by law, others just make good business sense. The insurances listed below are among the most commonly used and are merely a starting point for evaluating the needs of your business.
There are basically 3 ways to get Home Business Coverage:
- Depending on your type of business you might be able to add a rider to your existing homeowners policy. Some companies will offer property and liability insurance for "incidental" businesses operated from your home. But each company may define incidental differently. So be sure to check out the policy's terms.
- You can buy several individual business insurance policies to get the specific coverages you need, such as business property, general liability and business income insurance.
- Or you can get a businessowners 'package policy' that is designed specifically for smaller businesses, which combines all the business insurance coverages you need in a single policy.
Here are some of the types of business insurance you should consider:
- Home Office Insurance
- General Liability Coverage
- Commercial Auto Coverage
- Health Insurance
- Life and Disability Coverage
- Property & Casualty Coverage
- Business Interruption Insurance
- Umbrella Liability Policy
- Employment Practices Liability
- Compensating Injured Workers
Finding and choosing an Insurance Agent:
- The first obvious place to check is with your current home owner's insurance agent to see if they offer any kind of business insurance coverage. Many do not. But a word of caution here is that you want to be talking to someone who is knowledgable about home business insurance, not someone who knows they happen to offer it and are happy to add it on to your existing policy.
- Ask other people that you know who have home businesses who they use.
- Check with your state's insurance registry. A good agency will have been accepted by a many national insurance carriers to sell their insurance. Meaning basically that they offer insurance from more than one insurance carrier.
- Try to find an agency that covers all your small business needs for insurance coverage as listed above. That makes it much easier in the event you have claims to file.
- It's also beneficial to hire an agency that specializes in small and/or home business insurance. It's a different animal than big business.
- Also check on the agency's claims service. Do they pay out on claims as stated in their policy, or does it often come down to litigation? Ask them for references.
- When shopping for insurance agents, they should be asking you what type of business you conduct (service, manufacturing, selling products etc.), where you conduct this buisness, whether or not you have an office in your home (or if you conduct the business in your home), what your annual earnings are in the business, types of machinery, equipment and other business items you have and store etc., and number of employees. If they don't ask you this infomation, move on.
- Often times you can get a bit of a discount if a single agency carries all or at least many of your desired coverages, so be sure and ask. Also they may have other discounts, so ask for any special requirements for those as well (like fire alarms, security system).