5 Mistakes to Avoid When Purchasing Business Insurance

If you have a business here in the Triad area and you’re not carrying an adequate amount of quality business insurance, you’re running a huge risk. No matter what your business, whether it’s a small, home-based, one-person operation or a large enterprise employing lots of people, obtaining the proper level of business insurance should be first and foremost on your list of required items to ensure the health and success of your business. The reason is simple.

A single, unfortunate occurrence involving your business could literally wipe you out tomorrow and severely affect your financial well-being for the rest of your life. This is especially true for incidents involving a liability claim against your business, one of your employees or against you personally. Even something as seemingly innocuous as a slip-and-fall accident that ends up seriously injuring one of your customers – even someone who's simply visiting your home office for a consultation – could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Without adequate business insurance coverage in force, your business and even all of your personal assets are at risk.

Things to Consider

The first mistake you should avoid regarding the purchase of business insurance, as already mentioned, is to think you don’t need it or can’t afford it. Every business owner needs business insurance, without exception, and affording it is a small price to pay in exchange for the amount of protection against risk it provides. Here are some additional mistakes to avoid:

1. Don’t pick the wrong carrier. The best coverage will come from a top-name, A-rated company with a history of financial stability and fair claims payoffs..
2. Get the right type of protection for your type of business. Your business has unique needs and your policy should be custom designed to fit these. A dentist, for example, has different risk priorities than a retailer, although a certain overlap in some requirements will be present.
3. Too much protection is better than not enough. Your protection needs to cover all of your assets. An umbrella policy is a good option to ensure adequate protection.
4. Once a policy is in place don’t make the mistake of just leaving it as is forever. Coverage needs to be re-evaluated every year or two, or whenever major changes occur in the business.

Business insurance is incredibly important to have in place before something happens. If you wait, you’ll have waited too long.