Commercial Lines Insurance

Trusted independent agency. Meeting ALL your insurance needs.

Having been a business owner for over 20 years and insurance agent for over 10 years, I understand the struggles and concerns of owning a business. This makes me an ideal partner in assisting your efforts to providing the most cost-effective coverage for your business.

We will take a comprehensive approach when reviewing all your business policies and ensure that you understand all the coverages that you have. We will help you to de risk profits and increase your net worth with an innovation strategy that will also help you to save for retirement at the same time!

Commercial Liability

Liability Insurance consists primarily of liability coverage, which protects an insured party against injury or damage claims made by other parties. This policy will protect your business from financial loss should you be liable for property damage or personal and advertising injury caused by your services or business operations and employees.

Business Auto

Business Auto Coverage ensures vehicles that are owned, leased, hired, or borrowed by businesses, whether they are associations, corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships. Business Auto coverage may be used to ensure private passenger autos and all types of trucks, trailers, semitrailers, and commercial vehicles designed for use on public roads.

Work Comp

Workers’ Compensation coverage applies to bodily injury and diseases arising out of and in the course of employment. Any bodily injury must be accidental, and the term includes death resulting from the accident. Only occupational diseases, which are unique to the occupation, are covered. Workers’ Compensation provides for the payment of four types of benefits, medical, income, death, and rehabilitation.

Property

Property Insurance covers the risk of property loss in a variety of commercial situations, including commercial buildings, equipment, furniture, fixtures, inventories, business records, supplies and other physical items.

Inland Marine

Inland Marine covers products, tools, materials, and equipment when transported or while left at an alternate site.

Business Owners Insurance

A Business Owners Policy (BOP) combines business property and business liability insurance into one convenient policy. We’ll work with you to design coverage that protects your business from a variety of risks, unique to you.

A business owners policy is known as BOP for short. This is appropriate, given that it offers a one-two punch. It’s a combination policy that brings together two types of coverages.

The first type is property insurance. Property insurance covers risks associated with your business’ premises, equipment, and vehicles. Additionally, it often includes any associated loss of business.

The second type is liability insurance. Liability insurance covers damage to people you deal with and their property. But it’s important to note that liability insurance usually doesn’t cover risks related to professional services–meaning damages that result from you giving clients inaccurate advice, for example.

Getting a business policy (BOP) means covering all these risks in one go, which reduces stress and brings peace of mind. The policy will usually be custom made to cover your specific needs, so pricing can vary significantly. But it’s normally cheaper than buying separate policies for each element.

We can help design a business owners policy (or BOP) that works best for you and your business. Reach out to get started!

Commercial Umbrella Insurance

Commercial umbrella insurance is designed to supplement existing insurance policies, giving you an additional layer of protection for your business. It kicks in if the very worst happens with your business insurance policies.

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 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.

For example, let’s say you have a liability insurance policy of $500,000 for your business, but you must pay damages of $700,000. If you have a commercial umbrella policy in place for your business, the liability insurance policy will pay out in full first, and then the umbrella policy will pick up the remaining $200,000.

The beauty of umbrella insurance is that because there’s a relatively low chance it will need to pay out, it’s often considerably cheaper to purchase than you might expect.

Commercial umbrella insurance is a great way to further protect your assets. Reach out, and we’ll help you to determine if it’s right for your business.

General Liability

No matter the size and nature of your business, we will work with you to determine your business risks and we’ll put together an insurance package that makes sense for your business.

When you look around your business, it’s obvious that you need to protect against damage to your buildings, equipment, and staff. Less obvious–but no less important–is the risk of damage to other people and businesses, which could leave you paying out large sums if you are held liable.

General liability insurance mainly covers bodily injury to people outside of your business and physical damage to their property. A few exceptions to this principle include data loss and reputation damage (for example, if one of your business’ staff members defames a client).

It’s important to note that general liability coverage doesn’t apply to cases where you are sued for giving inadequate professional advice. Errors and omissions insurance (E&O) can help to protect your business from that specific type of risk.

Your business needs general liability insurance if you ever meet clients (at your business or theirs) or have any physical access to their equipment. Additionally, general liability insurance is a requirement before some businesses will sign a contract with you.

General liability insurance is a common necessity for most businesses. We can help you to determine a policy that works for your unique business.

Business Auto

Whether you have one vehicle or a whole fleet, we can help you implement custom coverage that will protect your business and personal assets from the additional exposure that commercial vehicles bring with them.

A vehicle collision is never good news, but when it’s one of your business’ cars or trucks, the consequences are more complicated. Business auto insurance, also called commercial auto insurance, takes all the elements of normal auto coverage, and adds on extra protection.

when obtaining commercial car insurance, you can usually get much higher liability coverage to reflect the fact that a business typically has more assets at risk than an individual would. Additionally, with commercial auto insurance, you can get collision insurance. This type of coverage pays out for damage to your commercial car or truck no matter who caused the collision–a protection that’s often a must if you lease or finance commercial vehicles.

It’s also worth considering employers non-owned car liability coverage. Employers non-owned car liability coverage is an add-on or a separate policy covering those instances when your staff use their own personal cars or trucks as part of their work for your business. This type of protection can help reduce the risk of messy legal complications if they are injured or their vehicle is damaged during this time.

Commercial Property

Commercial property insurance protects your assets if they are stolen, damaged or destroyed in a fire or natural disaster. We’ll partner with you to design insurance coverage that will protect your company’s property.

Fire, flooding, theft, or accidental damage are unfortunate incidents that could not only damage or destroy your property but could also devastate your business.

Whether it’s buildings, commercial vehicles, or equipment, losing these assets would be a potentially critical setback for your business.

A commercial property insurance policy can protect against the cost of replacing lost or damaged property. Additionally, commercial property insurance can cover any associated losses–such as lost income–that are caused because part or all your business is temporarily knocked out of action.

Other points to check include whether a policy covers the cost of removing debris before reconstruction begins, as well as whether the business property is covered against weather event damage while being rebuilt.

Commercial property insurance is a great way to ensure that your business’ location and assets, as well as your income, are protected. Have questions? We’re happy to help!

Inland Marine

Inland marine insurance is coverage that protects your business property while it’s away from your business location. This will also protect the property not only at your location but also while it is off-site or in transit.

Inland marine insurance is very important, as many commercial property insurance policies will only cover items or equipment that are on your business’ physical premises.

Inland marine insurance tends to be customized to your specific needs. We can help to provide expert advice regarding if and how your business might need it.

Additional insured

In an insurance policy, an additional insured refers to anyone other than the policyholder who is covered by an insurance policy. Coverage might be limited to a single event, or it could last for the policy's lifetime.

Certificate of Insurance

A COI proves that you're insured in case of an accident or lawsuit, so potential clients and business partners may want to see a copy and will receive a notification if you lapse on the policy.

A certificate of insurance is purely informational and does not alter or amend any insurance policy. A COI does not serve as an insurance contract, policy, or coverage.

Cyber Liability

Cyber liability insurance protects your business against the expenses associated with a data breach. We’ll help you evaluate the data liability risks your business faces and find you a policy that meets your specific needs.

Getting hacked isn’t just a hassle. It also poses a potentially huge and unexpected cost to your business.

Several action steps must be taken once your business has experienced a cyber hack. These steps include:

Notifying customers and clients of the breach (a legal requirement in most states)

Restoring your business’ website to working order

Dealing with extortion attempts

Paying damages to clients, customers and suppliers who lose out because of your breach

All these necessary action steps can lead to a hefty, unexpected cost for your business. Not to mention, dealing with the aftermath of a cyber hack could close your business temporarily, which could result in a loss of income.

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

In addition to protecting your business against cyber risks financially, obtaining cyber liability insurance can also help reduce potential risks, because insurers will talk through your current cyber-defenses and identify potential weaknesses that you need to plug.

Want to obtain a cyber liability insurance policy for your business? Reach out. We’re ready to help!

Employment practices

As an employer, you face a rising tide of employment practices litigation alleging discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, and other employment-related issues. We’ll work with you to help you assess and manage your risk proactively.

It’s easy to feel as if employing people is a legal minefield. This is mainly because there is so much potential for lawsuits over wrongful termination, harassment, discrimination, and workplace conditions.

Employment practice liability insurance (or EPLI) covers the risk of having to payout such claims. EPLI policies often cover the business itself, as well as individuals like company directors.

Employment practice and liability insurance policies are usually written to cover cases that come out of unintentional actions (or failures to act) rather than deliberate acts of discrimination or other wrongful practice.

One question to ask an insurer is whether the costs of defending a claim in court count towards the payout limit for any damages. Also, look out for mention of a “claims made” basis–that’s insurance jargon that means you are only covered if the policy is active both when the alleged incident took place and when the employee makes the claim.

Errors and Omissions

Errors and omissions liability insurance protects any business that gives advice, makes educated recommendations, designs solutions or represents the needs of others. We’ll design coverage that will ensure that one simple mistake does not cause financial devastation.

This most commonly involves professional advice that you give to clients. But, with some policies, it also involves unintentional violations of copyright and other intellectual property law, or defamation such as libel.

For companies that provide advice, E&O liability insurance is essential. But it can also prove to be very useful for companies that supply software and similar tools that clients might then use for their own businesses.

A good E&O liability insurance policy will cover both the costs of any damages themselves and the costs of defending claims for your business. We can help to find the right errors and omissions liability insurance policy for your business to ensure that this is the case.

Directors and Officers

Directors’ and officers’ liability insurance covers directors and officers for claims made against them while serving on a board of directors and/or as an officer. Directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance covers the costs of settling claims for damages that result from poor decisions. Usually, D&O policies 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.

Flood Insurance

At least 25 percent of businesses that close after destructive events such as floods never reopen. 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, during which the facilities can’t be used.

In some cases, flood insurance policies don’t take effect until after a 30-day waiting period, so it’s not smart to wait until heavy rain is forecasted in your business’ location. Additionally, 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 snowstorm into an unexpected catastrophic event. As a business owner, you’ll need to look at both commercial flood insurance offered through the federal National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and commercial flood insurance coverage from non-NFIP policies. The two big advantages of non-NFIP policies are that they can pay out full replacement costs (whereas NFIP payments account for depreciation), and they can include coverage for loss of business during the rebuilding phase (loss of business is not covered by NFIP).

Whether your business is in an area of common flooding or not, commercial flood insurance is worth exploring. Contact our insurance experts, and we can help you get started.

Crime Insurance

Every company, regardless of size, is a potential target for white collar crime. We’ll work with you to design insurance coverage that helps you minimize risk and protects your business and your assets from theft, fraud, and forgery.

Commercial crime insurance isn’t so much about men in masks and a bag marked “LOOT,” but rather what’s better known as white-collar crime. Commercial crime insurance covers not just physical property being stolen, but also financial theft such as fraud, siphoning off funds and bogus invoicing. These types of events pose a serious risk to businesses. 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.

One major benefit of business crime insurance is that insurers will often offer advice or support to help reduce the risks of suffering such crime in the first place. Or, if a crime of this nature occurs at your business, insurers may provide expert investigators who can increase the chances of finding the culprits (and reduce the risk of repeat offenses).

Fiduciary Liability

Fiduciary liability insurance protects individuals acting as ERISA fiduciaries against fiduciary-related claims of mismanagement of a company’s employee benefit plan. We’ll work with you to ensure that employee benefits are handled responsibly, and your trustees are protected.

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 employees benefit schemes.

Officers of a company who oversee such schemes have fiduciary duties. This means that they are ethically and legally bound to act in the best interests of the employees and can be sued if they breach this duty (even unintentionally). A breach of this duty could be as simple as making investment decisions for the plan that don’t work out well.

ERISA means a fiduciary could be held financially responsible for making good any losses from their alleged mistakes or failings, and when you’re talking about a workforce’s retirement benefits, that can make for eye-watering figures.

Many general liability insurance policies don’t cover claims relating to ERISA, so a specialist fiduciary liability policy is the best way to mitigate this risk.

Policies usually cover the costs of defending claims and paying out any liability. Additionally, fiduciary liability insurance often includes access to expert lawyers who specialize in ERISA cases.

Systems Breakdown

Systems breakdown insurance covers the sudden and accidental, physical damage to equipment that requires its repair or replacement. We’ll design comprehensive coverage to protect your business against a financial disaster.

Commercial property insurance protects your business against equipment and machinery being damaged by fire, flood, and other external risk. But it doesn’t cover risks such as mechanical failure, breakdown, wiring problems or short circuits.

Such breakdowns can bring your business to a grinding halt as you deal with both the cost and time spent repairing or replacing. Systems breakdown insurance always covers the repair and replacement costs, and you’ll often have the option to pay a higher premium to protect against loss of business during the downtime.

A systems breakdown insurance policy can cover all sorts of equipment used in your business–such as elevators or heating–rather than just the machinery your business uses while manufacturing. Policies usually cover computer equipment but will only pay out for physical hardware damage rather than software failure or malware.

It’s worth noting that, while manufacturer warranties may pay for repair costs or provide replacements in some circumstances, they usually aren’t as extensive as with systems breakdown insurance. For example, the warranty might not cover accidental damage from human error, such as overloading electrical circuits. But systems breakdown insurance (or mechanical breakdown insurance) will cover this type of incident.

Commercial Lines Insurance

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