Do you have Adequate Business Contents Insurance?

When you make an investment in technology or other equipment, don’t forget the insurance. Your business will soon become dependent on these tools as they allow your practices to adapt. If something happened to make them unusable, or if they were stolen, how would you cope? With adequate insurance, they can quickly be replaced – but are they fully covered? It’s true that business contents insurance is yet another cost, but is it something you can afford to do without?

Cover Both on and off the Premises
When you add new items, or update old ones, the value of your business contents usually rises, so you need to be sure that your policy will cover it. Electronic equipment is also becoming increasingly mobile and business people travel with smart phones, laptops, iPads and other tablets. You need insurance that will these items even when they are off the premises, and you should impress upon your staff the importance of compliance with the rules on exclusions that apply to the policy.

If you own your premises the responsibility for insuring the building clearly lies with you. If you rent, it may be the landlord who holds this cover. But whether or not you have buildings insurance, you need business contents cover in case of fire, lightning, explosion, storm, riot, malicious damage, theft etc., as insurance policies will state. Some insurers even offer cover for yours and your employees’, personal items while on the business property. Your policy will cover the cost of repair or replacement as necessary, but only if the value of what is lost has been properly estimated.

Get Help to Value your Contents
If you buy high value items, you should contact your insurers and find out if you need to arrange more cover. Meanwhile, it could be time to get your outsourced bookkeepers to help you conduct an inventory to get a proper valuation of all your contents, so that you can be confident about your level of cover. The only things you might be able to leave out of the valuation are those little luxuries that make working life easier but are not absolutely necessary for the running of the business. Think hard before you exclude anything though; you could regret it.

When you undertake this inventory, you may find old equipment that is now obsolete for your purposes. It can be disposed of and perhaps you can sell it. Your outsourced bookkeepers may know someone in a start-up situation who might be glad of it. You could put the money you make on it towards your business contents premium.

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