FS360 Episode 19 - How to best insure your small to medium business

 As a business owner, insuring all aspects of your business is vital, as Tom Molan from Elders Insurance Ballarat Central spoke about on the FS360 podcast.

For a small business Tom believes there are three insurances they must have to confidently protect themselves.

1. Work Cover
2. Assets
3. Liability

Protecting your employees and yourself through work cover is objective number one and covering any mistakes that could have a destructive impact on the business through your liability cover is number three.

Assets is the area that Tom says some businesses don’t consider enough, sometimes not protecting enough of the assets associated with their business.

“For example, an excavation business, they’ll have their excavator and their bobcat insured but they won’t have thought about all the add ons and the trailers and the utes …” he said.

“You have that conversation with them and then they start to look at the whole business, rather than just ‘I’m in the excavator, I better make sure that’s insured.”

When considering insurance policies, Tom says key aspects to be mindful of are hidden limits and basic cover. The policy may say your contents are covered, but only up to $1000, a hidden limit. Or, there’s a basic cover in place, but when you look into it further, it doesn’t include jewellery or the tennis racquet in the back of your car etc.

If you’re a new start up business, Tom and the Elders team will discuss with you exactly what your business will entail and decisions on policies can be made from this.

“For example, a plumber, are you a gas plumber? Are you residential or commercial? What’s the 60 percent of your work going to entail?” he said.

“We need your plumbers license numbers, we need to know exactly what you’re going to have in terms of machinery, stock etc.”

Once they understand exactly what the business is, they can decide what you need to cover. Is it just your assets? Are you a sole trader? If you went down would your business go with you? Would you need accident and illness cover?

Once established, Tom encourages businesses to assess their insurance policies every year. He and his team would expect to meet with a client six weeks before renewal. Here they can analyse if there was any downturn or growth, see if there have been increases in stock levels, if aspects of their business have changed, whether they’ve incorporated another part of their business in, new machinery, more staff etc.

For any general insurance enquiries feel free to give Tom and his team a call at Elders Insurance Ballarat Central.