Types of business insurance

Insurance is very important for entrepreneurs. After all, you don’t want all your hard work to be ruined by fire, theft, or other types of risk. There are a few basic types of insurance that every business needs to have. These include:

• Fire Insurance — You guessed it, to cover for any damage caused by fires. You should also look at coverage for storms, smoke damage, floods or any other disasters.
• Theft Insurance/Burglary Protection — No matter what type of business it is that you run, you need to cover yourself from theft.
• Liability Insurance — Should be obtained to cover your business for any type of injury sustained by anyone while on your premises.

Aside from these major types of insurance, there are loads of other types to help cover companies in more specific industries or situations. Review these carefully, considering which could possibly be a concern for your business:

• Dishonesty Insurance — This will cover thefts that might occur by employees of your business. You should discuss insurance requirements for your business with a qualified and experienced insurance agent.
• General Liability Insurance — Covers your business’ assets if your company is sued due to injury or property damage.
• Business Interruption or Loss of Income Insurance — Protects you from any losses due to a temporary interruption or shutdown of the business.
• Professional Liability Insurance — Important for those providing a service like consulting or coaching.
• Surety Insurance — Provides surety companies with 100% reinsurance capacity.
• Fidelity Insurance — Protects from loss of securities, money or inventory resulting from crime.
• Crime Insurance — Covers money losses due to counterfeit money orders or paper currency, credit card fraud, forgery or employee breach of trust.
• Business Travel Insurance — Can cover medical expenses during travel, trip interruption/after departure insurance, flight and travel accident insurance, as well as baggage and personal effects insurance.
• Business Premises Insurance — Covers for damage from a variety of causes to your business premises.
• Credit Insurance/Accounts Receivable Insurance — Protects against the non-payment of outstanding accounts receivable balances, and losses from currency inconvertibility or transfer risk.
• Business-use Vehicle Insurance — Covers motor vehicle accidents involving any company vehicles.
• Disability or Accident and Sickness Insurance — Covers disability, accidents or sicknesses of company employees or owners.
• Workers’ Compensation — Required if you have employees or contracted workers.
• Key Person Insurance — Required if there’s a key person or people within your business. The insurance is used to help cover the replacement of knowledge and expertise of the key person/people in the event of death. This allows the company to keep running and avoid dissolution.
• Partnership Insurance — Required in the case of a partnership to protect partners from the demise of another partner.
• Health Insurance — May be necessary if you’re not covered by a spouse’s plan.
• Identity Theft — In order to protect yourself and your business from identity theft.
• E-commerce Fraud — Necessary for companies that do business online. Includes protection over spammers, websites being hacked and online service functionality.
• Product Liability Coverage — Important if you’re starting a food-related business.