Saving Money on Your Business Insurance

Choosing the right insurance for your business is not as simple as insuring your home or car. Because businesses are individual and unique, insurance packages have to be build up or designed and this is costly. Insurance premiums account for a huge chunk of any business’ budget and it’s tempting to skimp on cover to try to keep costs down. This proves to be a false economy when you actually need your insurance to pay out on a claim, and you discover you’re not covered.  There are other ways to ensure your insurance premiums stay at a less eye watering figure, without leaving yourself under-insured.

Compare a range of quotes. This does sound obvious, but after a few phone calls to insurers, each at least 30 minutes long, you will be tempted to take whatever they offer you just to avoid another round of questions. Try online insurers, you can be multi-tasking and getting online quotes whilst on the phone to another insurer, and don’t be afraid to tell them you’ve been quoted elsewhere and ask them to match it or provide an incentive to take their quote over someone else’s.

Lower your liability risk. Ask insurers whether making changes such as an installing an approved security system or conducting regular risk management assessments would bring the premium down.  Just as keeping your car in a locked garage rather than on the road overnight lowers your car insurance premium; the same theory can be applied to your business insurance. Just make sure you check that any changes you make are worth it, it’s no good installing an expensive security system only to discover that the insurers don’t recognise or approve it or it saves less per year than you paid out. It’s important to be aware of all of the potential risks that your business faces as these are the risks the insurers statistically work with to get your quote.

Check for extras. Go over your policy with a fine tooth comb and highlight anything you don’t remember agreeing to. Insurers are notorious for dropping in extras, like legal expenses cover, to a policy that take the premium higher. You may find, in the example of legal expenses insurance, that you have covered yourself several times on different policies unnecessarily.

Review your cover regularly. At least annually, you should check your cover for unnecessary coverage. Businesses change all the time, you might have sold or closed a part of the business, sold off a number of cars in your fleet or changed to a more secure premises.

Consider separate policies.  Some business insurers specialise in the cover of one aspect of your business (let’s say stock value cover) and can offer you a competitive price. But when you build in other cover required (like business car insurance) the premium rockets. It is worth looking at whether going to different insurers for different aspects of your business reduces the overall insurance expenditure. For business car insurance, make sure you shop around a variety of different budget car insurance companies, as doing so will most definitely help you to keep expenditures down.