New Business Insurance Checklist

If you’re employing staff then you’ll require employers’ liability insurance as a legal requirement. If an employee is injured or becomes ill carrying out the work they do for you, then it’s likely you’ll have to pay compensation to that employee as they’re unable to work.

The only exemptions that could apply to employers’ liability are if you employ a family member or someone based abroad.

Professional indemnity insurance is recommended if you’re offering knowledge, skills or advice as part of your role. Having PI insurance can protect you for claims made by clients if they’ve made a loss or suffered damage as a result of your work. By having this type of insurance, you can financially protect your business from mistakes your employees might make.

If you work with or around the public, or invite them into your premises such as a restaurant, cafe or shop, then you should have public liability insurance. It protects you from claims made from the public after interacting with your business, and can cover personal injuries, damage or loss to property, and even death.

If for whatever reason your business is unable to function as usual, through something like a fire, storm, flood or breakdown of essential equipment, then you can protect your business financially through business interruption insurance. This type of insurance aims to have your business in the same operating position as it was before the interrupting event occurred.

If you own your offices or your shop, then it’s recommended that you have a form of commercial buildings insurance (also known as commercial property) in place to protect you from things such as flooding, fire, deliberate vandalism, burst pipes and accidental damage (which doesn’t fall under negligence). Contents can cover the items you have in your commercial property.

Stock insurance is a special type of insurance that covers the stock you have either in your shop, cafe, restaurant or warehouse. If you’re a retail business then protection of stock is essential in case it’s damaged, lost or stolen. Another example is a takeaway, where your food is the stock. The loss or theft of your ingredients would make your business inoperable.

If you operate a business that owns and/or operates a number of cars and commercial vehicles such as company cars, vans and lorries; then you should be looking at fleet insurance. Instead of insuring every individual vehicle you have, you can have a blanket fleet insurance policy that can take into account each vehicle you use and the risk associated with using each vehicle for its commercial purposes. You can also add or remove vehicles from the policy with only minor amends to the policy required.