Business Insurances – Protecting your commercial interests

Bonds have been in use in the construction and civil engineering industry since the 1600s. They give a valuable guarantee of payment or damages owed under a contract. They're common in the  construction industry but are also used to underpin contractual obligations and meet statutory requirements in a wide range of sectors.

What is the purpose of bonds and guarantees insurance?
If you are in the construction, engineering, importing, brewing, outsourcing, services or waste sectors, or indeed any industry where you have to make contractual obligations, this insurance will protect your finances. You may be a building contractor providing a bond to your employer, or an importer providing a bond to your local tax authority. Either way it's an acceptable way to avoid potentially ruinous financial risks and guarantee surety.

Key features
Good quality bonds and guarantees insurance covers financial loss under these circumstances:

• 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

Expert support with risk management and claim services
Feel free to contact us if you'd like to discuss bonds and guarantees cover with a team of experienced experts, or buy a policy to suit your organisation's needs. You will enjoy great value for money, the best quality products, plus valuable risk management services and excellent support with making successful claims.

What happens when your business is brought to a sudden stop? Business interruption insurance protects your organisation by paying for help and support getting your business back up and running, because of a flood, a computer system failure breakdown, fire, theft or any number of other common, everyday risks businesses face.

What is the purpose of business interruption insurance?
Business interruption insurance comes with a valuable material damage provision. This means it pays out after a claim is made against your commercial building or contents insurance, covering any financial losses that happen as a direct consequence of a business interruption, for example lost income or expenses for extra staff.  

Key features
Here are the basics covered under every good quality business interruption policy:

• 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

Experienced experts help you with risk management and claim services
We don't just sell insurance. We also help our customers with risk management and claims support. Feel free to contact us if you'd like to discuss business interruption cover with an expert. You will benefit from excellent value for money and exceptional quality products.

What happens when your business vehicles can't operate for some reason? Can your business carry on regardless? The answer is probably no. Commercial vehicle insurance protects your vehicles against a broad range of common everyday circumstances.  

What is the purpose of commercial vehicle insurance?
You want the best quality insurance cover for your commercial vehicles, comprehensive cover that protects your bottom line against all the major risks your vehicles might encounter, from public liability to property damage and theft to accidents, collisions, medical payments, towing and labour costs.

Key features
Here's what most good quality commercial vehicle insurance policies cover:

• 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

We do much more than simply selling insurance
You can trust us to source and provide good value-for-money insurance that protects your financial interests properly, plus a really good claims service to support you if the worst happens. But there's more. We also provide expert risk management services to ensure your insurance premiums are as low as possible, your vehicles are as safe as possible, and the business risks you face are as unlikely to happen as possible. Contact us to find out more.

Credit insurance is an insurance product designed to protect a business against bad debts like unpaid invoices, whether it's existing or new customers, suppliers or anyone else who may owe you money.

What is the purpose of credit insurance?
Trade receivables can add up to as much as a third of the total assets on your balance sheet. Trade credit insurance protects organisations against commercial and political risks beyond their control. It helps businesses grow profitably, minimising the financial risk behind unexpected insolvencies. It lets you confidently extend credit to new, unknown customers and improves access to funding, protecting your business against the failure of customers to pay trade credit debts.

Key features
Here are the things that a top quality credit insurance policy will protect your company's finances against:

• 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
• Covers a portfolio of buyers
• Pays an agreed percentage of an invoice or receivable that's unpaid because of long term default, insolvency or bankruptcy

Credit insurance plus risk management and claims support
You can trust us to source credit insurance that protects your financial interests properly. We also help you minimise the credit risks you face and provide a brilliant claims support service. Contact us to find out more about this essential policy, or to buy a policy to protect your business. 

Every business is vulnerable to theft, embezzlement and other crimes, and cyber crime is high on the list these days. Crime and fidelity insurance is designed to pay out if your business suffers from fraud, supporting a bright future, helping you to manage risk and generating healthy growth.

What is the purpose of crime and fidelity insurance?
Commercial crime insurance covers money, securities and other property against a variety of common criminal acts. It matters because financial loss is not the only result of fraud. It is also about keeping hold of disappointed customers, rebuilding damage to your brand and reviving employee morale. Crime and Employee Infidelity cover is important for every size of business, but smaller businesses are often at a greater risk simply because they can't afford the same internal security measures as bigger organisations.

Key features
This is what a good quality crime and fidelity policy will protect your business against:

• 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

More than simply an insurance policy
The cover provided by our insurer partners comes with access to investigative experts, whose job it is to find out how big the loss is and identify how it happened. This saves you time and money, speeds up the claims process and helps you avoid similar occurrences in the future. If that sounds good, let's talk. Please contact us.

Cyber insurance policies cover legal liability for breaches of data, when customers' personal details are stolen or used by hackers or criminals. If this happens to you, the legal costs can go sky high and you may have to pay compensation. The European Union's new data protection laws, the GDPR affect every business, anywhere in the world, that collects, manages, manipulates or uses personal data about EU citizens. If that's you, it's even more important to protect that data from harm and mischief.

What is the purpose of Cyber insurance?
New methods of hacking arrive every day, and no business is 100% safe at all times. There's always a chance that a hacker might get into your IT systems and networks, and cause damage to information or steal it altogether. Unless you have enough money available to pay potentially huge legal liability and compensation costs, it's a wise buy.

Key features
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

We'll help you choose the perfect policy at the best price. We also give our customers helpful claims support and good advice about minimising the risks they face. Contact us to discuss the options with experts.

D&O insurance policies offer liability cover for company managers to protect them from claims which may arise from the decisions and actions taken as part of their everyday duties. D&O liability insurance is 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 is the purpose of D&O insurance?
Even senior managers can make mistakes. In today's world they are often legally liable, too. They have to make difficult and often complicated decisions that have a big impact, sometimes making those decisions based on limited information, for example a merger or acquisition. This insurance protects a company against any expenses that occur as a result of mistakes by directors and officers.

Key features
This is what a good quality D&O policy will cover your senior people 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)

An insurance policy with extra benefits
The cover we provide via our insurer partners is enhanced thanks to our popular claims support and risk management services, all designed to help your company avoid common risks and – if a claim occurs – get it sorted out quickly and painlessly. Contact us for the details.

As an employer you are responsible for the health and safety of your employees while they're at work. If your business has employees, contractors, casual workers or temporary staff, you will benefit from employers’ liability cover. In some countries it is a legal requirement, designed to handle claims from employees who have been injured or become seriously ill as a direct result of working for your business.

What is the purpose of employers liability insurance?
If an employee or former employee brings a compensation claim against your business, the law can force the employer to pay compensation for injury, costs and various other damages like medical care and lost income.

Key features
What does a good quality employers liability insurance cover?

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

We help defend your business with claims support and risk avoidance advice
Good health and safety practices are your best line of defence. It really helps if you can reduce the risk of  accidents and illness. You need to know the regulations for your sector, and carry out regular risk assessments to protect the people who work for you. As well as selling insurance, we can support you with advice and guidance on cutting the risks right down, and with making claims quickly and smoothly. Feel free to contact us to find out more.

Product liability insurance covers the cost of compensating 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 is the purpose of public and product liability insurance?
Public and product liability insurance is important when your business designs, manufactures or supplies a physical product, whether you sell it or give it away. You can be held legally liable for compensation if your business name appears on the product, you repair or change a product, you imported it from outside your home country, can't identify the manufacturer or they've gone bust.

Key features
Here's what this vital insurance policy protects your company against:

• 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

Get more than insurance – We give claims support and risk management advice
As well as selling top class insurance products, we help you reduce the risks inherent in making, supplying and distributing products. Feel free to contact us and  find out more about the policies we provide and the professional support services we offer.

What happens when your advice isn't good enough, or you fail to give the best advice to a customer or client? If they believe you have given them inadequate advice, poor service or bad designs and they've lost money as a result, a professional indemnity insurance policy will cover the legal costs and expenses involved in defending the claim, as well as any compensation you have to pay to the client.

What is the purpose of professional indemnity insurance?
Without PI cover you could be legally liable for large amounts of legal fees and compensation payments, as well as lost income from the time you spend defending yourself. If you're a medical practitioner, management or business consultant, IT professional, recruitment agency, web designer, marketer, fitness professional or teacher, it'll help you achieve peace of mind.

Key features
This is what you are covered for under a good quality professional indemnity policy:

• 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

Quality insurance plus more to support your business
Insurance is one thing. But it makes a lot of sense to reduce the potential risks in the first place, and it's also important to be able to make a claim quickly and get it paid fast. We help our customers reduce the risks they face, and we also offer a valuable claims support service. If you'd like to know more or speak to an expert, contact us.

Prize indemnity insurance is a type of indemnity policy designed to deal with marketing and advertising promotions where those involved are given the chance to win prizes. Instead of keeping cash reserves to cover large prizes, the promoter pays an insurance company, which reimburses the cost when a prize is awarded. In other words, you're insured if someone wins your competition, as long as the chance of someone winning isn't an actual certainty. 

What is the purpose of prize indemnity insurance?
This cover is all about calculable probability. It comes into its own 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 totally subjective. It's perfect if you want to hold potentially expensive competitions with big prizes, leaving you safe in the knowledge that if someone wins the insurance policy will cover the cost of the prize. As such this type of insurance is popular with sporting events.

Key features
This type of cover protects your finances simply by paying out the value of a prize if someone wins.

Find out more
If you'd like to find out more about prize indemnity cover, we're experts in the field and have a suite of insurance partners on hand to underwrite your policy. We can also provide claims support to help your claim go quickly and smoothly. Contact us for more information.

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. It covers liabilities that occur because of an act of terrorism, including the use of force or violence, whether the terrorists are acting alone or on behalf of an organisation. It covers your financial liabilities whether the incident is committed for religious, political or ideological reasons.

What is the purpose of Terrorism insurance?
At any one time, in numerous places across the world, there are real terrorist threats, and an incident – even a minor one - can prove very expensive to a business. So it's important to protect your organisation if there's even a small possibility that your company may be affected by terrorism. 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's even more important.

Key features
A good quality commercial terrorism liability policy includes 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

Contact us to talk about cover against terrorism
If you think your company needs commercial terrorism liability insurance, get in touch with us and we'll give you sensible advice about the kind of policy you need, and the amount of cover you should choose. We'll also help you manage the risk of terrorism and can support you through the often complex claims process if you need expert help.