Running your own small business can be very rewarding. It can also be a lot of work compared to simply working for other people. The chances are you will have to juggle the day to day and future success of your business with a lot of paperwork. You’ll need, for example, to make sure that you tick all the right legal boxes. You’ll also need to ensure that you have the right levels of small business insurance in place to protect your livelihood.
It may not be as easy for a small business to buy insurance as it might be for a larger company. A lot of general commercial policies may actually be designed for larger businesses. They may offer a load of cover options that will suit a larger business really well but these may not be all applicable to you.
Getting cover you don’t need may well simply waste your money. It is, of course, important to make sure that your small business insurance covers your company as well as it can. But, why pay for cover that your business may not need at this point in time? The aim with insurance, for most small business owners, is to get the cover they do need but not to have to pay for cover that they will never use.
It may be better for you to sit down and think about what might happen if something went wrong. Good insurance cover will give you financial back-up if things do go wrong so you really need to work out what you need to look after. You may, for example, need to consider issues like:
· Your tools/equipment;
· Your liability to your customers, the general public and any employees you may have (employers’ liability insurance, for example, is in most cases a legal requirement);
· Your premises and your vehicles.
Rather than looking at general business insurance policies you may well find that an off the shelf small business insurance policy will work just as well for you. The package you get may well cover all your needs or you may need to add a couple of features on to it to get complete cover. In either case you may well end up with cover that suits you, your business and your finances better.
