Insurances safeguards the business you've worked hard to build.

Protect your business against the costs of data breaches with cyber liability insurance.

Insurance that helps cover the risk of getting hacked.
Getting hacked isn’t just a hassle. It also poses a potentially huge and unexpected cost to your business. Cyber liability insurance is a specialized policy that helps cover many of the risks your business faces from an information breach—and may even cover some risks you might not have thought of.

What does a cyber liability policy cover?
A cyber liability insurance policy may help you to cover the expenses associated with a cyber-attack. Additionally, some commercial cyber liability policies may cover loss of business while your systems are compromised or unavailable. You may even be able to get coverage against inadvertently breaching somebody else’s copyright.

Protect your business from the potential risks of pollution with environmental insurance.

The cost of environmental damage to businesses.
Environmental concerns continue to be a leading societal and business issue, sometimes posing serious and unexpected challenges. These days, businesses face tougher environmental laws and greater public scrutiny. So, when your business accidentally causes pollution, contamination, or other environmental damage, it can be costly all around. By having an environmental insurance policy in place, you may help protect your business against the environmental risks you face.

Areas where business insurance alone is not enough.
The loss of business and replacement or repair of your equipment is a hefty price in itself, but your business could also face damages for the clean-up operation. Usually, these types of costs are not covered by general business liability insurance, so you’ll need an environmental policy to help protect your business. Here are some common environmental risks that your business may cause and would need coverage for:
– Oil Spill
– Lead
– Asbestos
– Mold

Nature can wreak havoc on your business. Protect it with natural disaster insurance.

There’s no telling when disaster will strike.
For most natural disasters, there’s no way to know when exactly one will hit. We can certainly expect hurricanes in the Atlantic during summer and scientists make predictions about how many and the severity, but there can always be surprises. Other disasters such as earthquakes and fires come with very little warning at all. To some extent, your business has to be ready for anything.

Natural disaster insurance is part of risk management.
Many standard business insurance policies either include very high deductibles for claims resulting from natural disasters, or they do not cover these claims at all. The first step in any risk management planning is to understand what is most likely to happen and what current insurance coverage is in place. Identifying gaps in coverage may help save tens of thousands of dollars or more down the road.

Protect cargo and vessels while in transport with ocean marine insurance.

Protect cargo and vessels while in transport with ocean marine insurance.
The real risks of transporting cargo by sea.
As the saying goes, “worse things happen at sea.” And, believe it or not, this saying holds true when it comes to shipping goods across the ocean. Ocean cargo services face a surprising range of risks. As expected, these risks include the dangers of collisions with other ships or running aground, but there’s also the threat of modern-day piracy, as well as the dangers of fire.

Plan and strategize for the long-term of your business with risk management solutions.

What is risk management and why is it important?
Every business has unique goals, just as it has industry-specific risks. Achieving those goals while minimizing the potential risks is what every risk management plan strives to achieve. The risk management process includes several key elements to help a business prepare for the worst and plan for the future. These include determining risks, understanding and prioritizing them based on occurrence and severity, developing a plan to reduce and mitigate those risks, and reviewing the process regularly to determine effectiveness.

Real-world examples of risk in business.
There are a variety of factors that determine the frequency of certain things impacting your business, such as the type of industry, location of operations, number of employees, and training programs to name a few. Knowing what some of the common business risks are can help get the risk management process started. Some examples include damage caused by natural disasters, accidental injuries, cyber hacks, and lawsuits from customers or employees. Identifying risk factors in your own business and how they impact your ability to achieve your goals is the initial part of the process.

Safeguard your property as the project is being built with builders risk insurance.

Under construction? You might need this coverage.
Builders risk insurance is effectively a form of property insurance that covers the period while the property is still under construction. It’s possible for the property owners to take out such a policy, though more commonly it will be a policy they insist that the contractors take out.

What builders risk insurance covers.
The key areas of coverage are damage caused by events such as fire and hail storms. You’ll also normally be covered for theft, vandalism (though not typically by your employees), and damage caused by vehicles or aircraft hitting the building. To make sure coverage levels are adequate, policies are often set at a fixed percentage of the total construction budget. You’ll need to check how long the policy lasts, as it typically won’t allow repeated extensions of the construction timeline.

What builders risk insurance covers.
The key areas of coverage are damage caused by events such as fire and hail storms. You’ll also normally be covered for theft, vandalism (though not typically by your employees), and damage caused by vehicles or aircraft hitting the building. To make sure coverage levels are adequate, policies are often set at a fixed percentage of the total construction budget. You’ll need to check how long the policy lasts, as it typically won’t allow repeated extensions of the construction timeline.

When faced with shutting down, there are a lot of “what ifs.” Business interruption insurance helps protect your business.

What is business interruption insurance?
Business interruption insurance, sometimes called business income interruption insurance, is your solution for when your business is forced to shut down due to a covered loss. For a set period of time, while repairs are made to your business, known as the restoration period, this particular insurance can help to cover the operating costs of your business, including:

• Loan payments that are due during the shutdown.
• Mortgage, rent, and lease payments.
• Payroll for your employees.
• Taxes, whether you pay them quarterly or monthly.
• The revenue you’d make if your business was open.

Coverage for when you rely on other businesses.
Sometimes it’s not your business that shuts down, but rather the business you rely on to keep yours running. Contingent business interruption insurance, also known as dependent properties, protects your business in the event that a covered loss damages non-owned property and causes your income to be reduced or lost. This coverage can apply to entities like buyers, suppliers, providers, and even drivers. For example, if a fire were to occur at a supplier and prevent delivery of necessary materials, your contingent business interruption insurance could cover the costs associated with that loss, including your income reduction.

Put your business in control with captive insurance management.

Insurance that gives your business more control.
Captive insurance has nothing to do with kidnapping. Rather, it’s a completely different way for your business to insure against the unique risks you face. In effect, your business would set up a separate legal entity—a captive insurance company—that acts as the insurer itself rather than taking out a policy with a traditional insurance company. Common reasons for doing this include:
– Covering risks that mainstream insurers don’t or won’t cover at a viable premium cost.
– Having greater control over insurance costs.
– Possible tax advantages.
– Removing the headaches of waiting for claims to be processed and the risk of payout disputes.

We’ll help you obtain a commercial bond for your business.

What are commercial bonds?
Being bonded is different from being insured, as commercial bonds are not technically insurance. Instead, think of bonds as an extra layer of protection for the parties involved. For example, with surety bonds, the obligee (the party requiring the bond) is protected if the principal (the party needing the bond) fails to fulfill a portion or the entirety of a contract. While your business may have insurance, you may also need to purchase a bond depending on the type of work you’re doing. We’ll explore a few specific types of bonds below. Also, different jurisdictions may have their own requirements for bonding. Here are some examples of the different types of commercial bonds:
Bid Bonds
– Contract Bonds
– Fiduciary Bonds
– License Bonds
– Lost Instrument Bonds
– Maintenance Bonds
– Miscellaneous Bonds
– Non-Contract Bonds
– Payment Bonds
– Performance Bonds
– Probate Bonds
– Public Official Bonds
– Subdivision Bonds
– Surety Bonds

Earthquakes can shake the foundations of your business. You need commercial earthquake insurance.

Commercial property insurance may not cover earthquakes.
You might not know this, but your commercial property insurance may exclude earthquake damage from your policy. This means you will need additional coverage for earthquakes to help make sure you’re protected. You’ll want to consider commercial earthquake insurance, especially if your business is located near a geological fault line, where many earthquakes tend to occur. Standard commercial earthquake insurance usually covers damage to your building and your business property, such as damaged inventory or equipment.

Earthquakes can interrupt your business operations.
Earthquakes tear apart neighborhoods, resulting in cracked and broken roads, downed power lines, landslides, and fires. All of these factors, including any damage your building sustains, can force your business to be shut down for days, weeks, or longer. Some earthquake insurance plans offer business interruption insurance which may help you avoid financial difficulties by providing your business with income until you resume your normal operations.

Don’t let your business sink. Safeguard your investment with commercial flood insurance.

Is your business protected with flood insurance?
As with homeowners insurance policies, many business owners don’t realize that their commercial property insurance doesn’t necessarily cover flooding. Suffering a flood can wipe out a business because it’s not just a matter of replacing damaged equipment and repairing buildings, but also the sheer time it takes where the facilities can’t be used.

Consider the risks of flood damage.
It’s important to note that with commercial properties, sudden excessive rainfall isn’t necessarily the biggest flood risk. You must also factor in drains getting clogged, which can turn a normal rainfall or snow storm into an unexpected catastrophic event. Just because your business isn’t in a flood zone doesn’t make it immune to flooding. Having commercial flood insurance may help to keep your business running, even after a catastrophe.

Keep your business from blowing away with commercial hurricane insurance.

Commercial property insurance may not cover hurricanes.
You might not know this, but your commercial property insurance may exclude hurricane damage from your policy or it may contain a high deductible. In that case, you will need a separate policy to go with your standard commercial property insurance. Factors like the location of your business, proximity to the coast, and your insurance carrier will likely influence the cost of your policy. However, when looking at the potential for many thousands of dollars in damages from just one storm, it’s beneficial to consider hurricane coverage.

Hurricanes can do a lot more than just damage your property.
Hurricanes devastate communities, resulting in flooded roads, fallen trees, and downed power lines to name a few. All of this, combined with any damage to your property, could cause your business to be shut down for days, weeks, or even longer. Including business interruption insurance with your commercial hurricane insurance policy may help you avoid financial difficulties by providing your business with income until you are able to resume your normal operations.

Supplement your business policy with commercial umbrella insurance for when you go over your limits.

Get backup coverage to help protect your business.
Commercial umbrella insurance is all about going one step further. It’s an added layer of protection that kicks in if the very worst happens with your business insurance policies. Essentially, if you go over your payout limit, it helps cover the excess costs that you would otherwise need to pay for out of pocket.

Kicks in when surpassing your payout limit.
Most business insurance policies—whether they cover commercial liability or commercial property—have a payout limit. Normally, your business would be on the hook for any expenses above and beyond this limit. This type of unexpected cost is something that could threaten the very survival of your business. A commercial umbrella insurance policy kicks in only if your main business insurance policy reaches the payout limit. At that time, the commercial umbrella policy would pay out the remaining costs.

Safeguard your business from theft, fraud, and forgery with crime insurance.

What is crime insurance and what does it cover?
Commercial crime insurance primarily covers white-collar crime. It may include coverage for the physical property being stolen, as well as financial theft such as fraud, siphoning off funds, and bogus invoicing. These types of events pose a serious risk to businesses, and having specialty coverage may help you prepare for the unexpected.

Complex solutions for a complex problem.
This is especially true because business practices continue to become more complicated and technology advancements continue to increase, the opportunities for sophisticated scams and frauds increase as well. As with any type of insurance, you’ll need to check exactly what’s covered, but insurance may protect against losses that you might have little or no chance of recovering through the court system.

Safeguard your senior leadership with directors and officers liability insurance.

Protection from bad business decisions.
Directors and senior officers in a business are paid to make big decisions, but if those decisions are wrong, things can get very costly. Directors and officers liability insurance, or D&O, helps to cover the costs of settling claims for damages that result from poor decisions. D&O policies typically cover costs relating to wrongful decisions, but not those decisions that are classed as criminal acts or that are designed to personally benefit the director, such as fraud and embezzlement.

What is covered by D&O liability insurance?
Examples of events covered by directors and officers liability insurance may include mistakes or missing information in company accounts or other financial documents or failing to properly enforce human resources policies. Depending on the location that the business is based in—specifically, its rules on director indemnification—the policy may cover damages and costs paid by the individual or by the business.

Manage your risk of lawsuits from employees with employment practice liability insurance.

Hiring employees? You need to consider EPLI.
It’s easy to feel as if employing people is a legal minefield. This is mainly because there is a high potential for lawsuits over wrongful termination, harassment, discrimination, and workplace conditions. With an employment practice liability insurance policy, also known as EPLI, you may be able to get coverage for some employment-related lawsuits such as:
– Wrongful Termination
– Harassment
– Discrimination
– Employee Benefit Mismanagement
– Career Deprivation
– Wrongful Discipline
– Contract Breach
– Failure to Employ or Promote

Mistakes happen. Errors and omissions insurance may help protect your business.

When general liability insurance isn’t enough.
You might think that general liability insurance covers every liability risk you face, but that would be an expensive mistake. This is where errors and omissions liability insurance, or E&O, comes into play. It helps to cover your business and your employees against claims of negligence or actions taken that harm someone else. If your business provides professional services or advises others, you may want to consider having an E&O policy to help safeguard your assets.

What errors and omissions liability insurance covers.
In simple terms, general liability insurance covers the costs of physical damage, whether that be to a person or your business property. Insurance may cover financial losses that other people—such as clients—suffer because of your actions or lack thereof. Coverage may include court costs as well as settlement costs, depending on your policy and the limits.

You worry about your event. We’ll handle your event insurance.

Insurance focuses on risks so you can focus on your event.
Organizing any event can be stressful, but the process is far easier if you know you’re covered against the financial risks of something going wrong. Event insurance may help give you that peace of mind and let you concentrate on making it a success.

Coverage for the cancellation of your event.
Generally, an event insurance policy covers two elements. The first is cancellation coverage, which is broader than the name might suggest. It usually covers the costs relating to postponements rather than just canceling the event outright. It may also cover the costs you face if the event goes ahead but you have to spend extra money because a supplier or venue lets you down. Be sure to check exactly what situations are covered.

As an ERISA fiduciary, consider fiduciary liability insurance for the unique risks you face.

Specific coverage for a specific financial risk.
Fiduciary liability insurance covers a very specific risk—and a potentially financially devastating one. The risk is breaching fiduciary duties, and it comes from the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which governs many employee benefit schemes.

What is ERISA?
ERISA, or the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, was passed to increase the level of liability for fiduciaries in order to help protect those using employee benefits.

Keep your business rolling with fleet insurance for your company vehicles.

One policy for your entire fleet.
Fleet insurance is a convenient way for businesses to cover all of their company-owned cars and trucks with one policy. This makes it easier and more cost-effective to manage all of your business vehicles under one policy. Whether your fleet consists of cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, or other types of vehicles, they may all be covered under your policy. It’s also important to note that you may be able to cover each of the vehicles in your fleet even if they serve different purposes.

Easily add new vehicles and change policy options.
One of the benefits of fleet insurance is that it’s easy to change the policy with the addition of a new vehicle or a change to coverage limits with a quick call to the insurance agent. This gives you the convenience of getting quality coverage and updating it as your business operations evolve. It also helps save you the most valuable resource in this industry—time.

Safeguard your property while off-site or in transit with inland marine insurance.

In transit? In storage? Get inland marine insurance.
Don’t be fooled by the name. Inland marine insurance has nothing to do with lakes and rivers. Instead, it helps cover the risks relating to property and equipment that’s either in transit (including by road or rail) or being stored by a third party. This is essential for businesses that rely on the property that is in transit, as the loss of that property could be devastating to your business financially without this coverage.

Industries that rely on this specialized coverage.
Inland marine insurance is most associated with companies shipping high-value goods to customers or retail outlets, but it has other uses such as covering expensive display equipment and demo models that you take to trade fairs. Some policies may even cover somebody else’s equipment stored on your premises, which is something that could be vital for businesses such as repair shops.

If you do business outside of the country, you may need international business insurance.

Conducting business outside the country? Get covered.
If you trade or operate your business outside the country, your insurance needs become much more complicated. Choosing an international business insurance provider is one way to set your mind at ease. But what does it mean to operate on an international level, exactly? Here are some examples of when your business might want to consider an international insurance policy:
– Import products from another country.
– Own an office in another country.
– Sell your services outside of the country.
– Send your employees to other countries for business.

Plan ahead for the survival of your business with key person life insurance.

Insurance coverage that businesses should not overlook.
You might describe the skills and knowledge of the senior staff as priceless, but if anything happened to them, the financial losses for your business could be very real. That’s why you need to safeguard the future of your business with insurance.

Ensure the continuation of your business.
Where ordinary life insurance compensates a person’s financial dependents for loss of income, key person life insurance is all about the costs a business faces when the person passes away. It’s best suited for staff who are so vital to the company’s operations that it could struggle to survive without them.

If your business sells or serves alcohol, liquor liability insurance is a must.

Your business may be responsible for alcohol-related incidents.
While it might seem unfair, you can be held responsible if you sell alcohol to a customer who then causes property damage or injury to themselves or others while intoxicated. Even if you win in a court case, you could still face legal costs defending a claim. That’s a big problem, as many business policies specifically exclude any claim resulting from an alcohol-related incident. With liquor liability insurance, these costs may be covered by your policy.

Get financial protection for beneficiaries with a probate bond.

What do probate bonds cover?
Probate bonds protect beneficiaries by offering a financial guarantee that estates and assets are properly managed and distributed by the fiduciary. Fiduciaries have control of someone else’s estate and assets and have many duties to perform during the probate process. If any of these are done incorrectly, it could result in a claim. Here is a list of things a probate bond ensures will be performed lawfully and ethically:
– Filing a will.
– Contacting beneficiaries.
– Verifying the validity of a will.
– Appraising the value of estate and assets.
– Paying debts still owed by the deceased.
– Locating and paying inheritances to beneficiaries.

Get guaranteed protection for large investments with a surety bond.

When would a surety bond be necessary?
A surety bond is an unusual form of insurance in that one person or organization pays for it, while another receives the benefit. It’s easier to understand with an example. Imagine a contractor is building a new office building for a government agency. The agency naturally wants a guarantee that the taxpayer won’t be left paying out of pocket if the contractor fails to deliver the offices as promised.

Keep your assets, income, and investment protected with systems breakdown insurance.

Does what commercial property insurance cannot.
Commercial property insurance protects your business against equipment and machinery being damaged by fire, flood, and other external risks. However, it doesn’t cover risks such as mechanical failure, breakdown, wiring problems, or short circuits. That’s where systems breakdown insurance comes into play, providing coverage for business interruption, income loss, and more should your business be impacted by the failure of certain equipment.

An empty building still needs coverage with vacant building insurance.

When is a commercial building considered vacant?
In many commercial property insurance plans, there is a vacancy clause that states that a building is considered vacant unless 31 percent of the total square footage of the building is occupied and being used for its intended purpose. That means if you own a retail strip mall, for instance, and less than 31 percent of your space is occupied by actual retailers, your building is considered vacant—even if you’re in the process of finding new tenants. Since vacant buildings are often a draw for accidents, vandalism, and theft, it’s important to understand vacant building insurance.