Small business and insurance doesn’t go together. You have a limited budget yet you want to be protected against anything and everything. Finding the right insurance policies can get quite confusing. Here’s a short guide to getting cheap insurance on a range of different policies and to give you some insight into how much you have to take into account.
Workers’ Compensation Insurance
It does exactly what it says on the can. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics states that in 2012 3 million non fatal accidents occurred. All of these would have been eligible for this form of insurance. It’s a type of insurance that ensures workers and their families don’t starve if they sustain an accident and have to take time off work.
Of course, it’s compulsory, so you don’t really have a choice as to whether you have it.
General Liability Insurance
There are six million small businesses in the U.S. today. And that means there’s a lot of scope for accidents and incidents to occur. General liability insurance is your answer to anything injuries might occur as a result of something you did.
For example, let’s say you installed a car exhaust system and it broke off leaving the person stranded in the middle of nowhere. They could sue you if they missed that big conference or contracted pneumonia because they were stuck in the cold. No matter how improbably, they can sue you.
General liability insurance protects you against these lawsuits. If you serve the general public, you need this insurance.
Product Liability Insurance
If you’re a product-based business, take out product liability insurance. It protects you should a defective product cause any injury. These injuries can be bodily or not. For example, if created a food product that ended up causing food poisoning this would protect you.
The amount you pay depends entirely on what you manufacture and the perceived risk. A clothing store wouldn’t pay as much as a store that sold small electrical appliances.
And if you need another reason as to why you need product liability insurance, look at these findings from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. They state that 90% of small businesses in America now have this type of insurance. They can’t all be wrong!
Commercial Property Insurance
Commercial property insurance protects your place of work from anything that might happen to it. This is where you have a great deal of flexibility over your policy. You can choose different levels of coverage that cover different things. Insurers also offer extras, such as cover in the event of a terrorist attack.
The cost of not having this insurance could be huge. In an article about flooding in Colorado, one chiropractor said he’d lost about $100,000 in equipment due to recent flooding. Can your small business handle this sort of natural disaster?
Overall, this isn’t an exhaustive list of all possible types of insurance. There are a range of other policies. You need to look into the various policies relevant to your specific industry sector.
Images: ”Insurance Policy / Shutterstock.com“
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