Business Insurance
Why You Need Business Insurance
No matter what type of business you run, smart small business owners know that a comprehensive, sound program of insurance helps protect your business and investment from paralyzing delays and devastating loss.
Protected by the right insurance coverages for your business, you can borrow money, hire employees,
and acquire buildings, vehicles, and equipment free from fear of ruin by accidents and events outside your control.
Business insurance protects your business from uncertain financial losses and provides peace of mind so that you can focus on the daily activities of running your business.
Property insurance
Business insurance includes two major categories of coverage: property and casualty.
Business property insurance, also known as fire insurance, provides coverage for direct property
damage to buildings and other structures you own or use, including fixtures and certain related property, such as fences.
Beyond covering direct damage to physical property, commercial property policies often have a provision to cover the costs of business interruption, a period of time when operations are suspended, and revenue is lost, because of the type of damage covered under the policy.
Casualty insurance
The second major category of business insurance is casualty insurance, otherwise known as
business liability insurance, which covers defense costs and damages arising from a business’s legal liability for damage or injury to another person or organization.
General liability insurance covers an organization’s liability for bodily injury, property damage, and personal/advertising injury incurred by an individual or organization that is not owned, controlled, or employed by the policyholder.
Injuries and illnesses incurred by employees, plus their lost wages, are insured separately through workers compensation insurance, which offers a common set of benefits through programs that vary by state.
In Virginia, any employer with the equivalent of three or more fulltime employees is required to purchase workers compensation coverage from a commercial insurer or registered professional employer organization, or provide the coverage by self-insuring on its own or through a self-insurance group. Part-time contractors and subcontractors who perform essentially the same work as the company are counted toward the employee total.
For more information about Workers Compensation Insurance, please see our Workers Compensation
Insurance page.
Vehicle insurance
It’s important to know that business property and general liability policies exclude coverage for losses related to the ownership and use of commercial vehicles registered for use on public roads. Registered vehicles are covered separately under commercial auto insurance policies.
(Unregistered mobile equipment, tractors, and other “off road” and utility vehicles can be covered under commercial property and general liability policies)
Commercial auto liability insurance is required of any company that uses registered vehicles to ensure that money is available to pay the medical expenses of any third party injured by a company vehicle when the company’s driver was at fault for an accident. Auto liability insurance also pays costs for repairing or replacing someone else’s vehicle or other property damaged by an insured, at-fault driver.
For the policyholder itself, commercial auto insurance companies include optional coverages to protect the value of the insured’s vehicles if they are damaged by collision only or by a wider range of “comprehensive” hazards (hail, debris, vandalism, flood, theft etc.). Commercial auto insureds can also purchase coverage for injuries they sustain in accidents caused by “hit and run” drivers or motorists
who are uninsured or underinsured for the cost.
Professional liability
The need for liability protection doesn’t end with general liability, auto liability, and workers compensation insurance.
An enterprise that provides any type of professional services—legal, medical, architectural, engineering, and more—should know that the liability policies mentioned above generally exclude coverage for any loss caused by an act or omission in providing a professional service. Given that, members of specialized occupations acquire professional liability insurance to cover claims alleging that something they did or failed to do resulted in an injury or loss to someone else. For that reason, professional liability insurance is also known as “errors and omissions” insurance.
Employment Practices Liability
Also, apart from state-mandated worker comp obligations, businesses have other legal obligations to their workers. Today, more and more companies of all sizes are acquiring employment practices liability insurance to cover their defense costs and damages if an employee or former employer claims he or she was illegally discriminated against in their treatment or compensation as an employee.
Life Insurance
Many employers also purchase life insurance as an employee benefit for their workers, and to compensate the company in the event that a critically important employee dies.
Cyber risks and insurance
The most rapidly growing type of risk facing business are “cyber” risks that threaten an organization’s networks and electronic data, as well as information provided by clients and business partners that the organization is required to safeguard.
Although victimized itself, a company in Virginia and most states that suffers a data breach will automatically incur legal fees and other expenses to notify affected persons and help them monitor their credit—even if there is no indication that any data has been used for fraudulent purposes.
To address the growing range of cyber risks, all types of businesses are acquiring cyber insurance
policies with a variety of coverages for a company’s network, data, liability for other networks and data, and their reputation as a reliable, responsible business partner.
The vaule of an agent
Cyber insurance is a new type of coverage that has developed rapidly in the 21st century, and individual cyber policies differ from each other in several respects. Those variations make it challenging to compare the cost and coverage between different cyber policies.
That challenge is one reason among many for anyone seeking small business insurance to use an insurance agency to help them select coverages that project their essential assets and operations. With the ability to ask multiple insurance companies for insurance quotes, our independent agecy can help you identify the business insurance cost quote that provides the value you seek for the protection you need.
Call Us Today For A Free Business Insurance Quote.
Types of Commercial Insurance We Offer
- General Liability Insurance
- Property Insurance
- Commercial Auto Insurance
- Inland Marine Insurance
- Builders Risk Insurance
- Professional Liability Insurance
- Cyber Liability Insurance
- Commercial Umbrella Insurance
- Workers Compensation Insurance
- Crime Insurance
- Fiduciary Liability
- Employment Practices Liability
- Directors and Officers Liability
