A Smarter Business Insurance Renewal

As your renewal deadline comes around, it’s easy for it to be treated like routine paperwork. However, as your business continues to change and grow, your insurance renewal meeting can be helpful to review not only your coverage but your business as well.

Business Changes

As your business has grown and become more complex, it is possible that the day-to-day operations of your business aren’t always a perfect match to what was in place during the last policy period. Small changes may add up in a way that could impact your insurance needs. Working with Covella Insurance Partners can help you review these changes and determine whether your business insurance coverage still reflects your current operations, such as:

• new employees or vehicles; or
• increased inventory to support a new account.

It can help to take a look at what has changed during the year and be ready to walk through those changes at renewal.

Payroll and Roles

While it may sound like just the boring details, changes in payroll can be a helpful reminder to consider not only changes in the size of your team, but also:

• The type of work performed
• How risky that work may be in terms of the physical location(s) where the work is done

As your business grows, job responsibilities can change and grow as well. For instance, employees that were primarily working out of your office last year may make more frequent visits to job sites. Technicians may now have new or unique equipment they are expected to operate. Supervisors or managers may take on new responsibilities such as leading larger field teams.

It’s helpful to consider not only permanent employees, but also contractors or temporary/seasonal staff as well. Updated payroll information and an outline of any changes to employee responsibilities can help ensure your insurance reflects your employees and their jobs, and not what they used to be.

Vehicles and Property

As your team continues to grow, it’s possible you may find the need for new vehicles or equipment. For instance, adding a delivery van may prompt questions like:

• Who will be driving it?
• Can employees take it home at the end of the day?
• Will you be storing tools or equipment or picking up/delivering inventory or your client’s property in it?

Even if your team doesn’t add dedicated company drivers, you may find an increased number of employees driving a business vehicle from time to time. Keeping an updated list of employees who could potentially operate a company vehicle can help avoid any unexpected conversations after an employee is involved in an auto accident while on the job. And while it may make sense that their personal auto insurance (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/auto-insurance.asp) would apply if an employee caused an accident, this is not always the case, especially when the employee was using the vehicle to make a regular delivery or client visit or stop to pick up some equipment on the way to a project.

New or updated leases can also bring about specific insurance requirements. For example:

• When you lease equipment, the agreement may require you to provide evidence of your insurance and may include requirements for specific coverages, loss provisions or other wording on a certificate of insurance.
• Likewise, your commercial property lease is likely to have insurance requirements as well, such as specific coverage amounts or requirements to add the building owner as an additional insured or provide a certificate of insurance before move-in.

Rather than relying on memory for conversations you or your staff may have had with a landlord or equipment lessor, it can help to dig out these leases/agreements and have the actual documents on hand during your insurance renewal conversation.

Visible Risks

Likewise, this may be a good opportunity to think through changes coming down the road, too. Some helpful questions may be:

• If I deliver/pick up my clients’ property or it is damaged during a service call, what are the financial impacts to my business?
• Am I covered sufficiently if I need to store equipment off site?
• As I add new employees, are they covered for the tasks they will be completing on a daily basis?
• Are there certificates of insurance my clients, lenders or landlords would like from me?
• How long would my business be interrupted if I couldn’t use one of my business locations?

Knowing the answers to these questions ahead of time can help you anticipate insurance needs as your business changes and proactively make any changes to your insurance rather than scrambling at a later date to update coverage to address a claim, employee’s auto accident or certificate of insurance (check this link) request.

Renewal Preparation

About 30 days ahead of your renewal deadline, it can help to:

Jot down any changes you anticipate over the coming policy period (new hires, adding deliveries, etc.). Being prepared with an organized list of updates will make it easy for you to share any updates as you continue to discuss your changing business needs.