Guide to Southend business insurance

January 19, 2016

If you are running a business in Southend or its surrounding area, there are one or two insurance implications – just as anywhere else in the country – which you need to take on board as a matter of law. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) identifies these as:

• Employers’ liability insurance – the law requires a minimum £5 million of cover to indemnify your business against claims from any employee who is injured, contracts an illness or has their property damaged in the course of their employment by you; and
• motor vehicle insurance – any car, van, truck or lorry you use in the running of your business needs to be insured up to a minimum level of third party cover, to protect the rights of other road users and members of the public who may be injured or have their property damaged by one of your vehicles.

Protecting your local business

But there are other ways in which local business insurance may help to safeguard your particular enterprise – and who better to understand and recognise your particular business needs than another local business, your own local insurance broker, those of us here at Alan Blunden in Southend.

Whether you are running a shop, an office, a restaurant, hotel or takeaway, we are able to tailor an insurance policy to suit your particular business needs.

The personal touch

In this day and age of instant communication via the internet, you might be thinking that your local business insurance needs might be met perfectly acceptably simply by going online, conducting your research for the most cost-effective price, and signing up with a single click of your mouse.

Whilst that might be true, you are likely to be missing out on any kind of personal relationship and instead have to make do with the disembodied voice of a call centre operative, possibly on the other side of the world.

Alan Blunden is staffed by real people only too eager to talk to you, get to know the requirements of your particular business, and establish a genuinely personal relationship to ensure that the insurance you eventually buy is the insurance you need.

What you might need

In order to assess the appropriate insurance for you, for example, we might look at the scope and nature of your business, the property from which you are operating, the fixtures, fittings and equipment needed to run your business and any vehicles on which you might rely.

You might also need protection against the various liabilities to which many a business is exposed. Most commonly, this is likely to take the form of public liability insurance, to protect your business against claims from customers or from members of the public who might suffer an injury or have their property damaged whilst visiting your premises,

Additionally, you may choose product liability insurance – if a major business activity lies in the sale of goods – or professional liability insurance if you are principally involved in the sale of your professional advice and other services.