No owner of a small to medium sized enterprise likes paying for insurance; it’s an expensive, regular outgoing of hard earned money, for which there are no immediate results. The constant references to “protection” are also enough to make you wonder whether SME insurance companies actually hire people to go around smashing companies up in the hope that it will scare other businesses into paying up.
The truth is that, although it may feel like you’re being robbed at the time, SME insurance companies are genuinely there to help you. Think about it this way; as a small company, any damage to buildings or stock – no matter how accidental or unfortunate – is going to have a major impact on your finances. There’s no way to predict that a fire is going to wipe out all your stock! Many a company can (and has) gone under due to nothing more than bad luck. The role of the SME insurance company is to bail you out when misfortune strikes, by paying for the damages and giving your company the opportunity to rebuild – a second chance that you might not otherwise have. Any accidental damage to stock, trade content and buildings will be paid for, as will damage that occurs as the result of fire or vandalism and losses due to events outside of your control. Twenty car pileups are never nice things, but they somehow seem even worse when it’s your goods littering the motorway.
SME insurance can also cover employer liability in the event of employees injuring themselves; something that seems to be becoming ever more common as judges continue to dish out massive sums at employment tribunals. Of course, it may be that you never suffer any business misfortune, all your employees remain happy and healthy all year round and shipping companies never mess up your order – but, in reality, is that a risk you can really afford to take? When you consider the amount of situations that SME insurance companies will protect you from, it really doesn’t seem too much to ask that you fork up a bit of money for their trouble. After all, how else do you think they can possibly afford to help you out when things go wrong?
Investing in SME insurance won’t mean you wind up paying for coverage you don’t want either; SME insurance is very flexible, to the extent that you can even decide how much of your stock you want to cover. Whatever you do cover will then be protected in the events of flood, fire and theft – three very common and often devastating scenarios. If you only have a couple of boxes of paper and a stapler in your stockroom, the potential for flood damage is rather slim. If, however, you are a pub with thousands of pounds of stock in the basement and no pub insurance; a flood could totally ruin your business! As if that wasn’t enough protection for most small to medium sized enterprises; SME insurance will also cover you against the theft of cash stored on site and any loss of profits caused by major business interruptions.
Total SME insurance coverage will protect your business from just about any realistic eventuality. As many small to medium sized enterprises are family-run businesses, this offers a peace of mind that you won’t find through CCTV installations. Of course it’s still going to be a painful moment when you have to pay the bills, but the day you find your shop windows smashed and the cash register gone…that’s when you’ll start thanking the Gods you took out some shop insurance.
Source by Henry Funk
