Business Insurance

Bonds give businesses with contractual obligations protection by giving them a guarantee of payment or damages owed under a contract. It’s popular with the construction and civil engineering sector as well as in importing, brewing, outsourcing, services, waste sectors and more. The policy lets you avoid potentially ruinous financial risks while guaranteeing surety.

What’s covered?

Bonds and Guarantees insurance protects you if a seller fails to meet their contractual obligations. It covers:

• Contractor default
• Performance and retention guarantees
• Advanced payment guarantees
• Bid bonds and maintenance guarantees
• Customs and excise guarantees
• Warehouse guarantees
• Utility guarantees.
• Court and administration bonds, including liquidation bonds and deceased estates
• Trade bonds for government departments and suppliers against enterprise debt payment failure

What if your business is brought to a sudden stop? Business interruption insurance pays for help and support getting the business back up and running because of a flood, a computer system failure breakdown, fire, theft or any number of other common, everyday risks.

What’s covered?

Business interruption insurance pays out for financial losses arising as a direct consequence of a business interruption. It covers:

• The profits you would have made based on previous months’ financial statements
• Fixed costs like operating expenses
• Temporary location, the expenses you face from setting up business temporarily
• Commission of – and training for – people who have to operate unfamiliar replacement machinery
• Reasonable extra expenses beyond your everyday, fixed operation costs
• Civil authority ingress and egress, when your premises has to close because of curfews and street closures
• Optional contingent business interruption coverage, which pays out when you can’t operate because your premises, your supplier’s or customer’s premises can’t be used

What happens when your commercial vehicles can’t operate? Will the business be able to carry on? Commercial vehicle insurance protects vehicles against a broad range of common everyday circumstances.

What’s covered?

You need comprehensive cover to protect your bottom line against the major risks your vehicles might face, from public liability to property damage and theft to accidents, collisions, medical payments, towing and labour costs. This type of policy covers:

• Third party, third party fire and theft or comprehensive cover
• Protection for a wide range of vehicles, from light goods to fleets and HGVs
• Costs that arise as a result of injuries to other people
• Costs arising from damage to other vehicles
• Fire
• Theft
• Medical expenses
• Accidental damage
• The cost of replacing a vehicle’s contents

Credit insurance protects a business against bad debts, whether it’s existing or new customers, suppliers or anyone else who owes you money. It’s vital when trade receivables can add up to as much as a third of total assets.

What’s covered?

Trade credit insurance protects your company against commercial and political risks beyond your control, helping the business grow profitably and confidently extend credit to new, unknown customers. It can include a portfolio of buyers and covers these essentials:

• Financial risks – Where a customer is unable to pay you what they owe
• Political risks – Where unexpected political situations prevent money being paid to you
• Pays an agreed percentage of an invoice or receivable that’s unpaid because of long term default, insolvency or bankruptcy

Every business is vulnerable to theft, embezzlement and other crimes, and cyber crime is a constant, fast-changing risk. Crime and fidelity insurance is designed to pay out if your business suffers from fraud, helping you to manage risk and generate healthy growth.

What’s covered?

Commercial crime insurance protects money, securities and other property against a variety of common criminal acts, whatever the size of your business, small to large. These policies cover:

• Employee theft
• Forgery
• Alteration
• Theft of money and securities inside the premises
• Robbery or safe burglary of other property inside the building
• Computer fraud
• Extortion
• Funds transfer fraud
• Money orders
• Counterfeit money
• Various cyber risks

Cyber insurance covers your business’s legal liability around breaches of data, when customers’ personal details are stolen or used by hackers or criminals. Because hacking methods constantly change and evolve, no business is 100% safe. Unless you have enough money spare to pay potentially huge legal liability and compensation costs, it’s a wise choice.

What’s covered?

You can buy either first party or third party cover. First party insurance can include:

• Loss or damage to your digital assets
• Business interruption because a network goes down
• Exhortation by third parties
• Customer notification expenses
• Reputation damage because of lost intellectual property or customers
• The electronic theft of money or digital assets
• Third-party insurance covers your customers. It can include:
• Security and privacy breaches
• Investigating, defending and paying civil damages
• Multi-media liability to pay for defending defamation, breach of privacy, and negligent published matter, either electronic or in print
• · Lost third party data, including compensation for denial of access and failed IT systems

D&O insurance provides liability cover for company managers to protect them from claims arising from their everyday decisions and actions, either paid to the directors and officers of a company or to the organization itself. It reimburses the business for losses and legal defence costs if a legal action is brought against it.

What’s covered?

In a complex world where directors and officers have to make difficult and often complicated decisions, often with limited information, the company’s expenses are covered. It protects the business against:

• The cost of defending legal proceedings
• Compensation costs from an unsuccessful legal defence
• Disqualification from a directorship
• Civil proceedings and legal damages
• Claims made by regulators and investors
• Claims made by creditors
• Claims relating to breaches of legislation
• Insolvency claims
• Employee discrimination claims
• Defence costs from criminal and regulatory investigations into the company where no wrongful act has been stated against a director
• Employment practices liability insurance (available as an optional extension)

As an employer you are responsible for the health and safety of employees while they’re at work, as well as any contractors, casual workers and temporary staff. If somebody is injured or becomes seriously ill as a direct result of working for your business, or they bring a compensation claim, it can be expensive.

What’s covered?

The law can force an employer to pay compensation for injuries, costs and various other damages like medical care and lost income. This policy covers:

• Compensation payments and legal costs if an employee sues for a work-related illness, injury or disease, on or off-site

Product liability insurance compensates people who are injured by a faulty product made by your business, whether you have designed, manufactured or supplied it. A relatively small defect can easily lead to enormous claims, which makes the product vital for any firm that manufactures, sells or gives away products of any kind.

What’s covered?

If your business designs, manufactures or supplies a physical product, whether you sell it or give it away, this policy type provides the protection you need. It covers:

• Compensation for personal injuries caused by a faulty product you are responsible for
• Loss of or damage to property caused by a faulty product
• Unforeseen circumstances like faulty products that you could not have identified

If you just distribute a product but do not actually make it, you will be protected against claims:

• For products that were already faulty when they were given to you by the supplier
• Where you gave customers adequate safety instructions and warnings about the product’s misuse
• Where you included terms for the return of faulty goods to the manufacturer
• Where your supply contact includes product safety, quality control and returned goods
• When you have really good quality control and record-keeping systems in place

If a client believes you have given them inadequate advice, poor service, or done something else wrong, and they’ve lost money as a result, a professional indemnity insurance policy pays your legal costs and the other expenses involved in defending the claim, as well as any compensation you have to pay to the client.

What’s covered?

As a management or business consultant, IT professional, recruitment agency, web designer, marketer, fitness professional or teacher, this type of policy offers essential protection:

• Covers you when you have to pay for correcting a mistake
• Covers your legal costs
• Can also cover intellectual property, dishonesty, defamation and loss of documents

Prize indemnity insurance is designed to deal with marketing and advertising promotions where there’s a chance people will win prizes, for example sporting events. Instead of keeping cash reserves to cover large prizes, the insurance company reimburses the cost when a prize is awarded. You are insured if someone wins your competition, as long as the chance of someone winning isn’t a certainty.

What’s covered?

When the probability of a loss is solely down to a mathematical formula, when there’s enough data so the probability of loss can be safely calculated, or where the probability is subjective, this insurance covers:

• Payment of the value of a prize if somebody wins

Terrorism Liability insurance pays out if your business is affected by an act of terrorism, compensating the organisation financially for common risks associated with terrorism, including the use of force or violence, whether the terrorists are acting alone or on behalf of an organisation, and whether the incident is committed for religious, political or ideological reasons.

What’s covered?

If you operate or trade in an area that suffers from regular attacks, or carry out a style of business that terror groups may object to idealistically, it will cover you for:

• Compensation for bodily injury and property damage that happens as a direct result of an act or acts of terrorism
• Bodily injury, including death, sickness, disease, physical injuries, mental injuries, anguish and shock to a third party
• The costs of investigating, appraising, defending and appealing any expenses related to terrorist activity
• Damage and destruction of a third party’s property because of a terrorist incident, including removing debris
• Financial damages you have to pay as the result of a claim