Most businesses should at least have some kind of liability insurances. Without it, a sole unfortunate accident can destroy your whole company.
General Liability Policy for Business
If your business even has minimal direct contacts with clients or customers, you need to have a general business liability policy. Just imagine that a client or customer suffers bodily injury in your business premises, like in your store or office, or due to negligence of one among your employees when the employee was working outside your main place of business. The injured person, in such a case, will be allowed to collect lost wages, medical bills, pain and sufferings, and other items from you. Moreover, except for physical injury, your business may also be liable for damage for such things like slander, libel, false imprisonment, and false arrest.
General liability policies offer coverage for judgements related to these kinds of injury lawsuit up to the limit of the policy, in addition to covering the costs of defending the lawsuit. These policies cover a variety of possible injuries of your clients; for example, falling and slipping at your business place or otherwise getting harmed by any physical object situated on your business premise. To be clearer, having general business liability insurance is an excellent idea whether your business is structured legally to limit personal liabilities or not. Even if, you’re personally protected from liabilities, a single injury suffered by any of your customer or client can result in damages that can bankrupt your business in case it’s uninsured. General business liability policy typically has limits for every incident in addition to overall limit for policy year.
Products Liability Insurance for Business
If you design, produce, or sell any products, you should consider getting products liability insurance seriously. This is the insurance which covers your business when a person gets injured by any product which is defective or it lacks sufficient safety instructions or warnings.
While products liability insurance is costly, you should consider the potential costs of going without this. Above all, if you manufacture the items that may injure people clearly, such as construction equipment or chemicals, products liability insurance is really worth its cost. But, if you’re just a retailer selling out products packaged by any manufacturer, and you don’t assemble, service, or provide advices regarding the products, then your possible liability is much more limited, with manufacturer bearing most legal responsibility generally. Consequently, you might have sufficient coverage under the general liability policy.
Deciding the apt amount of products liability insurance will largely depend on what type of products you’re dealing with. Any company which manufactures spiral-bound notebook and has 5 million annual sales won’t need as much of coverage as the company which manufacture artificial knees and has 5 million annual sales.
Vehicles Insurance
Your business vehicle insurance should not only cover trucks and cars owned by your business, but also the ones belonging to your staff, if their vehicles are used for business purpose. This kind of employees-vehicles insurance, known as “employer non-owned automobiles liability insurance,” generally is not very costly, and is worth its cost usually. The coverage it offers is not included in any general liability policy.
Though you may wish to investigate your employees’ driving record before sending them in company’s vehicle, or for company’s work by their vehicles, failure to check must not be a big problem under most of the policies. One exception will be where an insurer has excluded any employee from coverage specifically. Also, if your own company leases vehicles, then you must be capable to add cover for property damage or injury under either your vehicles insurance policy or general liability policy.
Workers’ Compensation Insurance
The workers’ compensation insurance generally covers injuries to your employees, and all the businesses with any number of employees are mandatory by law to get this insurance. The workers’ compensation insurance can protect your business from getting sued for negligence concerning your employees. Instead of lawsuit, the employees injured on their job get compensated for costs linked with their injuries by your workers’ compensation insurance.
So, to make workers’ comp claim, a fundamental rule is that the employee should be injured during the employment. This can be interpreted pretty broadly; for instance, it may include the employees injured at any social functions linked with your business. But, if you’re a sole proprietor, then you won’t be entitled for the workers’ compensation insurance also for yourself. In contrast, if you’re partner in any business structured as partnership, or officer of any corporation, you usually can get the workers’ compensation insurance also for yourself.
The particular requirements for getting workers’ compensation insurance differ on a place-by-place basis. Most of the small businesses pay wealth into state-run funds or get a good policy through any private insurance agency. “Self-insuring” requires keeping big amounts of money in reserve and for small businesses at least, this isn’t a sensible option.
