We all know what can happen.  Your insurance renewal paperwork drops through the letterbox or into your email inbox,  and you put it to one side, with the best of intentions to deal with it before it gets to the last minute.   Then, surprise, surprise, the renewal date arrives, so you just renew the policy as it is, in the hope that “it’s all ok”.

Sadly, however, it may not all be ok and this could lead to a claim not being paid in full or even for your business to be uninsured.

What can you do? Well, if your renewal date is not yet up then read through our top tips on things to look out for.  And if you have just renewed your policy it is still worth a read – it never hurts to check your details, and you might avoid a nasty surprise later down the line!

So here they are – our 11 top tips for things to review when your renewal papers arrive…or soon after!

  1. Changes in your Company. You might have formed a new company or changed a name, started a new trading name or changed directors. Depending on the type of insurance you have, some or all of these may need to be notified to the insurers.
  2. Sums Insured. This is something I talk about a lot but it is very important.  When did you last review your sums insured?  Have you bought new equipment or increased your stock levels? Are the sums insured still sufficient to replace everything?  Remember for example, that if you insure your machinery for only 75% of its new replacement cost, any claim you make could be reduced by 25%.
  3. New Processes. Your insurer may need to know if you are doing something in a different way as it may increase or reduce the risk.
  4. New Equipment. As well as affecting your sum insured (see above), the installation of new expensive equipment may mean any damage to it could have a bigger impact on your profits.  You should therefore review your business interruption sum insured and indemnity period – this is the length of time the insurer will pay for your loss of turnover after a claim.  So if it might take 7 months to replace a piece of machinery, it is unlikely that you will be back to your pre-loss turnover within 12 months.
  5. Claims and Incidents. Have you notified your insurer of all claims and possible circumstances that might lead to a claim?  This is especially important for professional indemnity and medical malpractice claims as your insurer may not deal with an incident that occurred before renewal, which you knew about but had not declared before renewal.
  6. Convictions. For any motor insurance, have you checked your drivers for any convictions? Insurers have different criteria for what needs to be disclosed but better to be safe than sorry.  Licences can be checked using the government website – https://www.gov.uk/view-driving-licence
  7. Changes to Security. Changes to your physical or alarm protection will almost certainly be relevant to your insurer.
  8. Liability Limits of Indemnity. Most insurers now give a £10,000,000 limit for employers’ liability claims, but malpractice and public liability limits can be much lower.  What is suitable will vary from sector to sector, but it’s important to bear in mind that a claim for major personal injury can quickly use up £1,000,000, so it’s wise to have a limit of at least £2,000,000.
  9. New Conditions and Exclusions. Policies do change so check these to make sure that you can still comply and that something important to you isn’t being excluded.
  10. Management Liability Insurance. If you don’t already have this, at least get a quotation.  It protects the directors or partners of a business against claims made against them personally for employment disputes, health and safety breaches and many other wrongful acts.  Importantly it protects the personal assets of the director or partner so they don’t have to defend a claim out of their own pockets.
  11. Cyber Insurance. It’s not just the big firms that can be severely impacted by a data breach, phishing scam or cyber-attack.  Smaller businesses more so in fact, because most do not have their own IT department to handle such an incident.   Even using your own IT consultants will cost money so having cyber specialists at the end of a phone to help you with what could be disabling your business or causing you a PR disaster, is invaluable.

If you have questions relating to any of these issues then please give us a call.  We will be happy to provide a complimentary review of your policy!

Tel: 01527 306041

Email: enquiries@apinsurance.co.uk

https://apinsurance-co-uk.stackstaging.com/