Have the right business insurance

There’s always lots of information around about the insurance you need if your home is hit by storms or flooding, but it’s not often that you see advice for businesses. So it was good recently to read an article in Real Business which looked into this: this was prompted by the damage caused across the south of England by the St Jude storm a month or so ago.

The article outlined some tips for SMEs to mitigate any disaster which might befall them, put together by broker One Insurance Solution. They include:

• Have business interruption insurance – and we know through our work with clients just how important this is. We’ve got a number of case studies which outline how clients might not have survived the damage to their businesses after flooding if they hadn’t been fully covered.
• Have stock and contents cover. The article highlights the importance of this in the event of damage to or theft of stock and equipment – and we have some very interesting examples of this.
• Have fridge and freezer cover – this is particularly aimed at the hospitality sector who have perishable materials and ingredients stored which would be lost in the event of a power cut.

There is also advice about speaking to an expert, and we would agree on two levels. Firstly, it’s important to speak to a specialist commercial insurance broker to understand exactly what cover you should have for your specific type of business.

But secondly, if the worst should happen, then we would advise bringing in professional loss assessors to handle your claim. Many of our commercial clients have stated openly that they don’t think their business would have survived if they hadn’t brought in Morgan Clark when they needed to make an insurance claim: it made all the difference in enabling them to continue trading and coming through more or less unscathed after what can be an extremely difficult situation.