It’s important to keep your livelihood protected.
Here are 10 commercial insurance policies you may not have known existed.
When you’re just getting a new business venture off the ground, it’s normal to feel a little nervous. After all, this is your livelihood. How do you make sure that your business (and your paycheck) are protected?
Thankfully, you have insurance.
Insurance can help protect your business from a wide variety of risks: from property damage to liability lawsuits and more. But your coverage options go way beyond commercial property insurance or general liability insurance.
In this article, we’ll go over 10 types of commercial insurance policies that you may not have known about to help you find additional coverage you may need.
1. Business Interruption Insurance
Whether it’s a busy retail store or a home office, there are many things that could force business owners to close up shop for a time. Would you still be able to pay rent and cover payroll if your doors were shut for weeks?
Enter: Business Interruption Insurance.
Available as a commercial property coverage on a Business Owner’s Policy (BOP), commercial packages, and just commercial property insurance, business interruption insurance offers reimbursement for lost income in the event of a covered loss.
2. Errors and Omissions
No one is perfect, but your clients and customers do expect a certain level of care. If you make a mistake or are negligent while performing your skilled trade—an accountant who makes a major mistake on a client’s tax returns, for example—do you have the means to defend yourself in court?
Professional liability insurance, also known as errors and omissions insurance, is designed to reimburse you for financial losses and legal costs in the event you are sued due to an unintentional error.
Without this valuable coverage, you would have to pay those attorney fees yourself—even if you win your case! Remember, your general liability policy only covers physical injury or property damage to a third party.
3. Workers Compensation Insurance
Despite OSHA standards, safety equipment, and rigorous training for each new employee, work-related injuries happen all the time.
Without workers’ compensation insurance, you could be forced to cover the costs of their medical bills if an injured employee decides to file a lawsuit against you.
In the state of Florida, workers’ comp insurance is mandatory for many businesses, but it’s also a smart and easy way to protect your financial interests.
4. Valuable Papers and Records
Electronic documentation might be the norm for some, but certain industries require the use of paper records to do business. If a fire, flood, or other disaster were to destroy your records room, would you be able to replace them all?
While valuable papers and records coverage can’t actually replace that lost paperwork, it can reimburse you for the time and energy needed to replicate them.
5. Data Breach
Electronic documents are often thought to be inherently more secure than a room full of paper files, but digital records can be just as vulnerable to things like cyber attacks and data breach.
Cyber attacks and data breaches pose a threat to you as well as your clients. Paying ransom demands, increasing your security, staging a PR campaign…it all adds up. In fact, more than half of all businesses will fail within six months of a cyber attack due to the immense costs involved.
That’s why cyber risk insurance is so important for businesses of any size.
6. Employment Practices Liability Insurance
If you have even a single employee (or are trying to hire one), you face the possibility of a lawsuit from a disgruntled staff member, former worker, or job applicant.
It doesn’t matter if this discrimination was perceived or intentional; if you are faced with a lawsuit, you will have to defend yourself anyway. Can you afford to pay out of pocket for those legal fees?
Employee Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) can cover your business’s legal costs and potentially any judgments or settlements you may have to pay resulting from unintentional errors. (Keep in mind, this coverage is only for unintentional errors. It won’t cover you if you break an employment law!)
It’s one of the most important commercial insurance policies you can purchase.
7. Employee Dishonesty Insurance
You do your best to make sure that your employees are trustworthy with your assets. However, this doesn’t always work out.
Whether they’re skimming from the till or taking products home with them, dishonest employees pose a threat to the success of your business. Employee dishonesty insurance can help provide some protection.
This coverage can be added as an endorsement to your existing commercial property insurance or purchased as a bond.
8. Liquor Liability
Whether you’re a bar or restaurant with a full cocktail menu or you just want to serve wine at the company holiday party, liquor liability coverage may help cover damages caused by an intoxicated person.
While we all hope that our customers and employees will drink responsibly, this isn’t always the case. Thankfully, with the right insurance, the results don’t have to bankrupt you.
9. Food Liability Insurance
As much as you try to prevent food poisoning, accidents can happen.
Food liability insurance adds an extra layer of protection for the things that threaten your catering company, restaurant, or food truck.
10. Key Person Insurance
In many businesses, the loss of a single employee can be managed without too much fuss. But for others, losing one particular person might be enough to disrupt operations for years to come.
Key person insurance is a life or disability insurance policy that can help you find and train an adequate replacement so that your doors can stay open.
Do You Have The Right Commercial Insurance Policies?
It takes more than a BOP to protect your livelihood; there are multiple types of business insurance that you need to consider—policies beyond commercial auto insurance and property protection.
At Harry Levine Insurance, keeping you protected is our passion, and we are committed to finding the commercial insurance policies that best fit your needs.
Call today for a free quote.
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