Quote It: All About Commercial Property Insurance
You probably don’t think about your business’s demise, but it can happen in an instant. You don’t have to mismanage a company for it to fail. A natural disaster, a failing economy, or even failure of critical vendors can put you out of work. While taking risks is part of running a business, you don’t have to take on unreasonable risks. That’s what commercial property insurance is for – to intelligently manage the risk of loss.
What Is It?
Commercial property insurance protects you if your business is interrupted due to a natural disaster or through some other uncontrollable act. Specifically, the insurance provides for protection of your company’s physical assets like office furniture and equipment.
If you’re uninsured, or underinsured, then you bear the risk of a total loss in the event of an earthquake, or flood – disasters that are typically not covered by traditional forms of insurance. On top of that, there’s the matter of your income. What will you do if you have to close up shop to make repairs? Commercial property insurance ensures that you have the funds necessary to stay in business.
Coverage Options
There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Commercial property insurance can cover a wide range of property, and you typically have a lot of discretion as to what you want to cover. For example, you can include items like office furniture, computers and other electronics, windows, outdoor signage, fences, personal and customer property that’s kept on-site.
The insurance kicks in if your property is damaged due to fire, vandalism, and flooding. Coverage is also provided if the pipes in your building burst or if a storm knocks over your business sign out front. While large corporations are the obvious target market for this type of insurance, small business owners really need this type of coverage – especially if you’re a brick-and-mortar business and own the building.
Types Of Coverage
There are generally three different types of coverage you can choose from:
- Crime and Fraud Protection
As the name suggests, this type of coverage protects you in the event you’re robbed. Since you can’t really predict theft, it’s an especially nice coverage to pick up if you keep any significant amount of money on the premises. It also protects you against theft of real property (i.e. computers, office furniture, etc), electronic fraud or forgery, and employee fraud and dishonesty.
- Business Interruption Coverage
Business interruption protection will pay your bills if your business has to close its doors temporarily. It pays for fixed expenses like wages, taxes, and utilities. In a sense, it’s a sort of disability insurance coverage for the company itself. Since your business is your sole source of income, anything that interrupts operations means you’re temporarily out of business – very bad. With this coverage, you have your own personal safety net, regardless of what happens.
- General LiabilityAccidents happen, and this is where general liability comes into play. This type of coverage guards against the very expensive nature of accidents than happen on your business property. If someone slips and falls, an employee injures himself, or if your employees injure a customer – whether purposefully or accidentally, this insurance will pay for legal expenses and damages.
John Wilber is a former businessman of many years. Now retired, he enjoys helping people by sharing his insurance insights on various blogs.
