Get the most out of your business insurance

August 18, 2015 10:14 pm | Published by | Categorised in:

No matter how hard owners may work to avoid them, disasters are an unavoidable aspect of life, and can strike a business at any time. Whether they take the form of IT system failures, floods, fires or earthquakes, unfortunately there is almost nothing a business owner can do to ensure that their business will be 100% protected from a crisis.

However, when it comes to claiming business insurance for a disaster, there are some ways to make the road to recovery run a whole lot smoother.

Take out adequate cover
Underinsurance can often be an issue at claim time since many small businesses mistakenly renew their policies without updating their cover. Hiring more staff, acquiring new property, stock and contents, increasing your revenue or taking on additional contracts means that a business’s policy must be updated. This includes any new purchases made under the revised small business tax write-offs.

Gather supporting documents
The more information a business owner can provide to their insurer, the better. This includes copies of receipts, financial records, photographs (if possible, before and after the disaster) and asset registers. Owners may want to consider keeping these records somewhere other than their business premises for extra protection, such as with the business’s accountant, backed up on a portable hard drive, or stored in the cloud.

Be patient
Some circumstances in disasters can slow down the claims process. For example, minor damage to a commercial vehicle can normally be fixed in a week, whereas major damage to a building will take a longer period of time to repair. If items have been stolen, the time taken to replace them depends on how easy they are to replace. Repairs can also be slowed down if there is a higher demand for builders or materials following a major disaster.