Business to Business

Companies that lease staff from employment leasing firms are often concerned with how their insurance coverage will apply to both liability claims caused by the leased worker and injuries to the leased worker. The commercial general liability (CGL) policy extends liability coverage to the insured organization for claims resulting from the actions of an "employee."

Depending on your type of business, general liability insurance may be your costliest insurance coverage. Following are suggestions on ways to help control costs and avoid unexpected surprises in a policy audit. Use Loss Control — See if your insurer offers premium reductions for certain loss control policies, such as theft prevention systems, emergency preparedness plans and the like. Then implement those policies and let your insurer know.

Many businesses are aware of the cost associated with repairing or rebuilding their property if damaged by a covered loss. What many commercial property policyholders may not realize is the extent of the costs of cleaning up the damaged property. While the property policy may be clear on how it will pay to repair or replace the damaged property (actual cash value, replacement cost, etc.), a valuable coverage that may not be as clear is the cost to remove debris.

New crash data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety indicate that SUVs are improving in safety ratings. IIHS says that midsized SUVs have much lower death rates than small, mid-sized and large cars and slightly better rates than very large cars. The vehicles have been redesigned to change the center of gravity, thereby reducing rollovers and other loss-of-control problems. Suspension systems have also been improved.

Four out of 10 Americans run some sort of business from their home, and even business owners who don’t exclusively work from home do so on occasion. One of the biggest gaps in coverage for business owners working from home is liability coverage for business related injuries on your home’s premises. Neither the standard homeowners policy nor a typical personal umbrella policy will pay for this type of loss.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports that motorists operating a cell phone while driving are four times as likely to get into a serious crash. And that could be a serious problem for employers, as a rising number of businesses have been held liable for accidents caused by an employee using a cell phone for work.

Most businesses know and appreciate the benefits of a mobile workforce. But what are the consequences? The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse reports that, since February 2005, about 88 million Americans have been exposed to potential identity theft. In at least 43 instances, accounting for almost 25% of all reported breaches, the cause was a stolen or missing laptop, few of which have been recovered.

If you’re like a lot of businesses, you depend on advertising for your growth and success. But creating and placing ads is probably an incidental activity that’s not part of your primary business. And when you advertise, you take risks. In most cases, your commercial insurance will cover you—but keep in mind that your protection is limited. For coverage to apply, another party must have suffered a business injury as a result of certain specific actions during your advertising activities.

As you know the 100th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake rumbled by recently. But did you know that if the same 7.9 magnitude earthquake were to shake the Bay area today, it would kill thousands of people, damage more then 90,000 buildings, displace as many as a quarter of a million households and result in more then $150 billion in damage?

If you're a building owner, you might also own the building you work in. Suppose a fire broke out inside your building and there was no way to put it out in time? Even worse, let's say that you had been warned about inadequate fire-safety standards and failed to do anything about it.

Thousands of business owners thought that they had the appropriate windstorm insurance to protect their operations—until the 2004 and 2005 hurricane season changed their minds. Many owners just didn’t understand what they were protected against, didn’t realize the differences between flood and windstorm coverage, and didn’t know how to deal with the army of insurance companies, contractors, roofers and suppliers that appeared in the aftermath of the storms.