What’s the best insurance for my business? Do you need any insurance for your business right now?
There are many different insurance coverage options for your business, but determining which business insurance coverage/policy you need can be difficult.
Today, we wanted to touch on the 5 basic coverages EVERY business should have in 2019.
Watch the video above for more details and explanation behind each of the Five Insurance Coverages every business needs.
1) General Liability
General liability is a must for every business, providing coverage for a variety of liabilities (including property damage or bodily injury to another party).
Another example where general liability covers your business is advertising injury. An example of this would be if you or someone in your company were to pull a copyrighted image or photo off the internet and post on your website or social media. Since you did not have written permission to use and it was copyrighted, you are now liable.
General liability insurance coverage offers solutions to a variety of claims for damages, including:
Customer, client, or contractor injuries on your property (such as slips, falls, or other personal injuries)
Libel, slander, or business disparagement
Copyright infringement in your advertisement(s)
Bodily injury or damage to another’s property arising from product defect
Property damage caused by your work or employee’s actions
2) Property Coverage
If you own a building, you need to have property coverage.
Property coverage also provides coverages for tools, furniture, computers, and other equipment on your premises.
Regardless of whether you own business automobiles or vehicles, you may need commercial auto insurance coverage.
Our commercial auto policy’s coverage can include:
Liability Coverage*
Uninsured Motorists Coverage*
Underinsured Motorists Coverage*
Physical Damage Coverage*
Two scenarios:
1) You own business vehicles
It’s pretty simple – if your company owns autos, you’ll need commercial auto insurance coverage.
This coverage will protect your business in the event that your automobiles are involved in an accident, damaged, or cause injury to others.
2) You don’t own business vehicles
Something we run into often is business owners who don’t own autos but automobiles are used. In order to avoid being brought into a lawsuit about someone (on company business) using their personal car, you’ll want to have a specific coverage for that.
*Exclusions apply
4) Worker’s Comp
Worker’s compensation coverage is one of the most critical coverages your business can get to protect the business and your employees.
Worker’s compensation is used to cover for medical expenses, lost wages, rehab expenses, or other costs that come up when an employee gets injured.
In South Carolina, if you have four or more employees (including the owners, LLC members, etc), you are required to carry this coverage.
Every business should keep themselves protected with worker’s comp coverage, but if you have questions on how this coverage would be applied, please give us a call or shoot an email our way and we’ll be happy to explain and advise you through it.
5) Cyber Liability
While a “newer” insurance coverage, it’s been out for some time and it’s becoming more and more prevalent. This is the coverage for theft of data or breach of data.
By having this coverage in place, it reduces the changes you’re going to have some sort of huge expense that goes along with that breach with the remedy costs, fines, and other expenses that go along with cyber/data loss.
Any business that collects, stores, or takes in personal identifiable information needs to consider putting a cyber coverage in place.
50% of small businesses breached are out of business after six months.
Cyber liability is prevalent. If you have questions about what kind of cyber coverage you need, please contact us so we can walk you through the options. We have some great coverage products that are available to help protect and cover your business.
Zach Bartness [00:00:00] This is Zach Bartness with Shared Alliance insurance and today I’m going to talk to you about the Five coverages every business needs or actually consider.
[00:00:13] The first coverage every business should have is General Liability. This is coverage for property damage or bodily injury to another party. It can also include advertising injury and that’s coming up more. For instance, maybe you pull a picture off the Internet that you posted on your social media or Web site and you did not have written permission to do so and it was copyrighted. Now, you’ve posted something you didn’t have permission to use; it was copyrighted and you are now liable. So just an example of how that can come into play. But every business should have some sort of general liability policy and we can curtail that to every businesses need just depending on what they’re doing and the scope of their operations.
[00:00:59] The second coverage every business should have as some sort of property coverage. If you own a building it’s pretty cut and dry. You need to have some coverage for that building. But the other things you need to consider covering or coverage for tools equipment furniture computers and stuff that are on that premises. If you’ve got people out in the field you might need coverage for stuff that’s out there. So we need to put a different policy in place for that. It’s called Inland Marine Policy.
[00:01:28] Third coverage every business should consider or have is some sort of commercial auto policy. If you own automobiles, it’s pretty simple: you got to have a commercial auto policy. But what we run into a lot of times, people do not own autos so there’s a coverage that you would want to put in place to protect the business should they be brought into a lawsuit about someone (on company business) using their personal car. The personal auto policy would be primary but the business could get brought into that suit and so you’d want to make sure there’s coverage in place for that as well.
[00:02:02] The fourth coverage every company needs to consider is workers comp: Worker’s compensation coverage. This is covered for medical expenses lost wages rehab expenses etc. that may come up. In South Carolina, if you have four or more employees including the owners or LLC members or whatever your structure is, you’re required to carry this coverage. That’s the state law and there are a few exceptions, but if we talk to you we can go through those with you. Every business should have this [worker’s compensation]. I can give you countless examples of why you should consider it even if maybe you’re not at that statutory requirement or if you’re subcontracting work out. There are all sorts of different things that can come up. So be very careful about that. It’s important to not make your decision based on the number of employees you have. At least have a conversation with somebody like myself or anyone in our office that can educate and advise you on that.
[00:02:58] Lastly, coverage (and it’s a newer coverage here), is cyber liability. It’s new or it’s it’s been out for some time now but it’s becoming more and more prevalent. And this is for coverage for theft of data or breach of data. By having this in place that reduces the chances that you’re going to have some sort of huge expense that goes along with that breach with the remedy costs and fines and things that go along with that. We’ve got some great products that are available that really will help protect and cover a business and be just a great conversation to have that. So anybody that collects stores or takes in personal identifiable information needs to consider putting something in place in this respect. I would hate to see a business not have that. But we see it all the time. And then, I’ll tell you this, (and as we’re closing on this topic) 50 percent of small businesses breached are out of business after six months. So it’s not a good thing. And it’s prevalent.
[00:04:02] Additional coverages that may come up: some specialty coverage you may need to add; foreign travel of employees (if you’ve got employees going overseas you need to have a conversation with us.) We can cover crime coverage so if you have theft of money or things like that we can throw that in there. Management liability of the decisions that the owners or management makes if there’s financial harm to employees or somebody else there could be some management liability there. EPLI employment practices liability. Very prevalent these days. Wrongful termination, things of that nature, sexual harassment. It’s definitely a coverage that businesses should consider. And then some sort of professional malpractice coverage. And basically if you are giving someone advice on how they should handle a situation and then based on your advice they now have a financial loss. You could be professionally liable. So that’s another covers to consider. But those five main ones I talked about those are the ones you’ve got to have or consider. Again thank you for listening. Check us out at sharedalliance.com Or give us a call 8 6 4 6 0 9 5 5 5 0. We look forward to helping you and being here for you. Thanks. Have a great day.
