Owning a business is risky, and you need to protect against these risks. Here we take a look at the various types of business insurance and why you need them.
Why Does Your Business Need Insurance?
The law states that your business must have insurance to protect against bad things happening, not just to you and your business, but also to the people and businesses you deal with.
What Types of Insurance Does a Business Need?
The essential types of insurance your business needs are liability insurance and motor insurance. However, public liability insurance and business continuity insurance are also recommended.
Liability Insurance
If you are employing any staff, it is a legal requirement in the UK that you have liability insurance. This is because you need to be covered in case anything happens to any of your staff. For example, if one of your members of staff was to become ill, get injured, or die, and it was due to their work, your business can be liable for this. In the UK there are almost 30,000 serious injuries and nearly 400 deaths in the workplace every year. Your business needs to be covered just in case this happens.
Motor Insurance
Anyone who has ever owned a car knows full well that motor insurance is compulsory. However, sometimes people fail to realise that their personal car insurance does not cover them for business use. Your insurance policy needs to specifically state that your car can be used for business, but a standard personal car insurance policy will not cover this.
If you employ staff members who use their own vehicles for their job, it is your responsibility to make sure they have full business insurance cover for the vehicle they are driving. If you don’t, and a vehicle related incident occurs while they are working, they will not be covered.
Public Liability Insurance
Although this type of insurance is not essential, you are strongly advised to have it. If you don’t then you will not be covered if anything happens to persons or property while you are working. If you fail to have public liability insurance, you may find that a lot of clients will not want to do business with you. It is particularly important if your business involves the public sector.
Business Continuity Insurance
This type of insurance is worth getting if you are worried about the effect a disaster might have on your business. For example, if your business property was to flood or catch fire and ruin all your business equipment, would you be able to cope? The likelihood of such an event happening may be small, but the results could be catastrophic to your business.
