As a small business owner, you work hard to ensure your business's success. But the fact is, sometimes, your business's success can be affected by events often out of your control. It is for times like these, where business insurance can help protect everything you are working so hard for.
Business insurance, also known as commercial insurance, are both terms often used to describe a variety of available insurance products designed with your small business or commercial interests in mind.
Common insurance products for business owners
Every business is different, but there are a series of insurance products available to business owners that will help you adequately protect your company from common risks. The following are some of the most popular types of business insurance coverages sought by business owners:
- Commercial property insurance
Commercial property insurance provides coverage for your building, contents, stock and equipment against physical loss or damage. It is typically paired up with Business Interruption coverage which compensates you for your lost income while your business is closed due to an insured loss. - Comprehensive, or commercial general liability (CGL)
CGL insurance is designed to cover claims against your business for bodily injury or property damage to other people. Examples of coverage include if a customer is injured at your place of business, or say an employee damages property at a client's site. CGL is not a Professional Liability (errors and omissions) policy. - Errors and omissions, also known as professional liability
This type of insurance (also known as E & O insurance)can be important coverage for anyone who deals with customers who could claim that something that you or your company did on their behalf was done incorrectly costing them money or causing them harm in some way. - Accounts receivable coverage
Accounts receivable protection provides coverage when business records are destroyed by an insured peril and the business cannot collect money owed. The policy covers these uncollectible sums plus the expense of record reconstruction and extra collection fees. It does not insure the physical value of the records themselves, such as the paper or computer disks and tapes. - Crime coverage and fidelity bonds
Crime coverage protects your business from losses resulting from crime, whether it's considered a burglary, robbery or theft. Fidelity bonds specifically cover theft perpetrated by your employees who might steal money, equipment or other assets from you (first-party fidelity) or a client (third-party fidelity.) - Cyber liability insurance
Although cyber liability insurance has been available in Canada since the late 1990s, it has only become popular in the last few years as high profile data breaches (like those at Target and the Home Depot) make the news. Data breaches and being hacked can be costly. Cyber liability coverage can protect your business against losses stemming from cyber attacks, and can be purchased as a standalone policy, or as an endorsement to either your Errors & Omissions or Commercial General Liability coverage. Cyber liability helps businesses, large and small, to protect themselves if they are ever compromised electronically.
Insurance can help protect you from a significant loss that could have a devastating impact on your business making it an important part of any business plan. Protect the business you're building, and get the business insurance coverage you need.
