Your goal is to grow your business, but with growth comes further liabilities that could threaten your assets, security and sustainability. Hiring new team members or launching a new product could feel like great indicators of continued success. However, they still create new risks that could lead to a large burden for your business insurance provider.
Therefore, the time will eventually come when you will need to consider updating your coverage so that it will continue to offer you optimized protection.
Some of the scenarios that will trigger a review to your coverage options include:
1. Moving, upgrading or expanding your workspace. If you are getting a new, more expensive office, then you will naturally need to upgrade your property insurance. At minimum, you should update your commercial property insurance so that it covers the address of the new location. However, you might also need to update your policy limits and endorsements to continue to carry optimized protection for the value of the location.
2. Launching a new product. If you plan to roll out a new service or product, then your liabilities and responsibilities will increase. Therefore, you might need to up your general liability insurance limits to offer the appropriate coverage for any potential loss that might arise.
3. Signing new contracts. By entering any type of contract, you enter a legally binding arrangement. Therefore, if you fail to uphold your end of the deal, then you will likely owe someone a lot of money. You want to ensure that your insurance offers appropriate coverage if this scenario ever arises.
4. Using company cars. A driver’s personal auto insurance policy will not offer them coverage if they are driving on behalf of their business. Therefore, whether you are buying a fleet of company cars or simply hiring drivers for certain tasks, then you might need to make the extra investment in commercial auto insurance.
5. Expanding your staff. If you are hiring more employees, then your insurance obligations will likely change. For example, workers’ compensation insurance, health insurance and other benefits are mandatory for most businesses, though there are sometimes exceptions if you only have a small number of employees. However, once you hire a single employee to exceed this limit, then you must buy the requisite coverage.
Even small businesses don’t stay small. They constantly grow, change and take on additional obligations, assets and liabilities. That’s why you should contact your business insurer at least once per year and review whether your existing coverage is still the best for you. Still, as soon as you make any change that you know might be a risk, don’t wait to contact them to update your policy.