Love on Your Business!

This month we meet up with Joe Chapman, our Commercial Lines Director here at Burke & Burke Insurance. Joe shares his business insurance expertise with us, answering questions like “What is business insurance and who needs it?” while adding valuable insight into how to understand your policy overall. Take a few moments and listen in or read along below to catch the highlights!

What is business insurance?

As Joe explains, business insurance is risk mitigation. He outlines 4 strategies to think about when you are reviewing your business.

1. Risk avoidance: Looking at the parts of your business that have a preponderance of risk that you aren’t willing to take. For example, sticking to what you’re good at.
2. Risk acceptance: Being willing to accept a particular risk. Joe uses the humorous example of accepting every six months or so he will stub his toe on the chest that is located at the end of his bed. It’s a low severity risk, but one he is willing to accept. The same applies to your business when looking at different risks.
3. Risk transfer (insurance): This one of course is our favorite! Working with your agent to transfer risk in the form of an insurance policy is another strategy in
   keeping your business protected.
4. Risk limitation: The most common strategy is to look for ways to limit the risk to your business. Start by asking yourself the question, “what is the severity level of
   the occurrence? For Joe, it might be adding a cushion to that chest to protect his toes or even moving it to a different location. Review your business regularly and have someone else review as well. Ask questions like what is your potential for risk, what risk strategies do you want to employ and what are you not good at? A thorough review will help you target those gaps that would leave you most vulnerable.

Who needs it?
Most businesses need insurance. Again, start by evaluating the risk level. Joe gives us four categories to help break down this process:

1. Legal: Most simply, states and localities often require business to have insurance. In Virginia, for example, workers compensation policies are required for businesses with 3 or more employees. Employee is a broad definition inVirigina, which can include full time, part time, volunteers or “other” so this is a good topic to bring to your agent to ensure you have the proper coverage.
2. Contractual: When taking on a job, (i.e. contractors), businesses must have a certain level of insurance to do the work. General contractors are a good example for how to model your policy. They transfer risk by making sure everyone on site has a certain level of insurance. Subcontractors do the same to ensure that all parties involved in a job have a certain level of coverage to mitigate risk and protect all businesses involved.
3. Business decisions for risk mitigation: What is the frequency of occurrences vs severity of occurrences. Transfer the risk to an insurance policy!
4. Credibility and reputation: As a business, you want to tell your clients that you are insured and bonded. You take your work seriously and you customers candepend on you and your reputation.

Types of insurance?
As you listen it to the video, you’ll hear Joe mention a few of these types of insurance.
Listed below are the ones we commonly see:

1. General liability and property
2. BOP (Business Owner’s Policy)
3. Worker’s compensation
4. Umbrella:

a. A quick note on umbrella coverage: they only cover certain parts of your policy, mainly parts of your general liability policy, not your entire business owner’s policy. Umbrellas do not go over your property, they go over your liability.

5. Commercial auto
6. Professional and management liability:

a. Items that are excluded from your liability policy (i.e. errors and omissions, malpractice). Designed to cover things that you are not an expert at but fall into your purview.

7. Bonds

When it comes time to choose a policy, Joe and his team will work to find you the best fit with our carriers. In some cases you may be able to put all your policies with one carrier,
in others you might need to work with a few carriers to find the best fit. No matter what, Joe and his team are equipped to work with you to find the best solution.

Tips for maintaining a healthy policy!

Joe’s parting advice is to review your business regularly. Focus on your risk profile; is it changing? Are you taking on parts of your business that are increasing your risk? Or perhaps you’ve downsized and now your risk is smaller. Bring these changes to Joe and his team to ensure that your policy is changing with your business. We look forward to helping your business stay protected from risk!

We’d be happy to review your insurance coverage options with you! Give us a call at (703) 751-1001 or visit https://burkeandburkeinsurance.com/.