Running a business seems to involve a never-ending list of things that you need to learn about and employ if you want to keep things growing and thriving. While some recommended tasks for business owners can be ignored with little damage done to your work, there are others that should be promptly addressed. One of the latter includes learning about insurance for your business. The following will explore a few aspects of insurance for business owners, with special attention paid to those who work in construction. Of course, some of this information will carry over into other industries as well.
Professional Liability Insurance
One of the major kinds of insurance that business owners in the construction industry might want is professional liability insurance. At apollocover.com/business-insurance/contractors-insurance/, they explain that this protects contractors in the event that they’re sued. Being sued can be the kiss of death for a business, especially one that is just getting started. Protecting yourself against this can keep your business safe while also reducing the stress of your position.
Commercial Property Insurance
Commercial property insurance applies to those business owners who have a physical location for their business. It protects the location and any equipment, office furniture, and computers, including equipment that is leased in addition to owned equipment. It also often covers exterior elements like signs and genes. Should lightning, violent storms, fire, hail, or extreme winds damage your property, you’ll be protected. Theft and vandalism costs can also be covered with this kind of policy.
Business Interruption Insurance
An insurance policy focused on business interruption is one that replaces the income that is lost when a small business needs to temporarily shut down for any reason included in the policy. Theft or natural disaster damage are often included in the list of reasons for temporary closure.
Business Owning Policies
The aforementioned insurance policies can sometimes be found combined into a single policy called a business owners policy (BOP). The bundle will often include professional liability insurance, commercial property insurance, and business interruption insurance.
Commercial Auto Insurance
If your business includes cars, trucks, or vans, commercial auto insurance is often ideal. Personal auto insurance policies tend to exclude business uses of a vehicle, and this could leave you in a rough spot should an accident occur.
Cyber Liability Insurance
While protection from cyberattacks and data breaches used to be something you’d encounter in science fiction novels, that’s no longer the case. Last year alone, businesses lost nearly seven billion dollars to cybercrime. You might think most of these businesses were large conglomerates, but small businesses tend to have less security and are targeted far more often than you’d think. If you are collecting employees’ data or customer data (even simply accepting payments by card or cheque), you have data that is valuable to hackers.
The above information should help you understand the importance of insurance for construction companies. Of course, every company is different, and that means there might be specific things you are interested in protecting that weren’t on this list. Speak to your local insurance provider about these kinds of concerns.
