Columnist

Protecting and insuring your business

Business people are dreamers, idealists. They have a vision and work as hard as humanly possible to see it realised.

Chasing a dream is always intoxicating and exciting. To see your idea go from a thought that was tossed around in your head one day whilst you were making dinner into an actual, fully-formed company, with products, employees and offices, is fantastic.

But the thrilling and exciting things in life need that bit of grit and muscle to back them up. That amazing glass office building needs strong concrete foundations. Your fancy lunchtime sandwich needs bread, or you’d just have a handful of pesto, prawns and rocket. Jimi Hendrix wouldn’t have been quite as good without his session musicians in the background – you get the idea.

Business insurance is that grit and muscle – the bread, the concrete foundations, the bassist. Not as much in the limelight, but just as important to your business as the vision that created it in the first place. It acts like a protective sheet, shielding your company from harm. In the modern age, no proper business is without insurance.

With AXA Business Insurance, you can cover various aspects of your business with relative ease. There are nine different types of insurance in all:

• Public liability insurance
• Employers’ liability insurance
• Professional indemnity insurance
• Van insurance
• Residential landlord insurance
• Commercial landlord insurance
• Commercial property insurance
• Fleet and haulage insurance
• Shop insurance

Of course, not every business will require every type of insurance. Your e-commerce company, run with a skeleton staff of three people out of a room in Manchester, may not have much need for fleet and haulage insurance. Similarly, a graphic design business probably won’t have much use for van insurance.

The core ones to consider are probably public liability insurance, employers’ liability insurance and professional indemnity insurance.

Public liability insurance protects you if people visit your workplace, or if your job has cause for you to visit the workplaces of others. Employers’ liability insurance is required by law if you have one or more employees, with a minimum of £5 million of cover. Should a member of staff suffer injury or illness at work, you could be liable for compensation without it. Professional indemnity insurance could be needed if you impart advice or wisdom to clients, handle confidential material or have access to intellectual property – very important in the new business age.

For more information visit AXA Business Insurance.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Peter Rivers .