Commercial Insurance Details
Commercial insurance is a contract between an insurer and a business owner. The purpose of commercial insurance is to minimize the owner’s risks against losses and make business owners whole.
Property protects the contents of your business against fire, theft and other perils. There are many different types of property insurance and levels of coverage available. Property insurance can be tailored to fit your needs since no two businesses are the same.
It is important to determine the property you need to insure for the continuation of your business and the level of insurance you need to replace or rebuild. To determine your property insurance needs the best thing to do is to take a complete inventory of all your business property.
General Liability insurance will protect your business assets in the event you or your employees are negligent, cause bodily injury, or property damage to another. Liability insurance covers the cost of lawsuits stemming from accidents that cause bodily injury (i.e., a customer slips on your steps) or property damage (you sell a defective lubricant that burns out a customer's car engine), and other miscellaneous claims such as libel, slander and false advertising. Liability will not only pay the cost of the damages, but also the attorney fees and other costs associated with your defense in a lawsuit, whether or not the lawsuit has merit.
However, liability insurance will not protect you against claims arising from nonperformance of a contract, wrongful termination of employees, sexual harassment, or race and gender lawsuits. This is another good reason to carefully read your policy.
Other types of liability insurance available include:
- Employment Practices Liability Insurance
- Employee Benefits Liability
- Garage Liability and Dealers Blanket
- Products and Completed Operations
- Personal & Adv Injury
- Med Pay
- Pollution
- Cyber Liability
Crime coverage protects businesses from theft and malicious damage, such as employee embezzlement.
Commercial Umbrella is an umbrella policy offers you extra liability insurance that pays for a loss when the limits of your underlying policy are reached. Also, there are some situations, such as libel and slander that a standard policy does not cover. An umbrella liability policy enables people to protect themselves against catastrophic lawsuits in such situations.
Umbrella policies are designed to cover large, infrequent losses
Umbrella liability insurance provides two kinds of coverage:
- Payments of liabilities in excess of the policy limits for an insured's basic commercial general liability, or employers' liability coverage; and
- Liability for areas not covered in other liability policies.
Commercial Auto & Hired and Non Owned Auto - Wisconsin law requires you to maintain minimum financial responsibility limits on motor vehicles you own and operate in connection with your business. The minimum financial responsibility requirements include:
- Bodily Injury and Property Damage Liability.This coverage protects drivers of your vehicle if they are responsible for causing injury or death to other people or damage to other property.
- Uninsured Motorist.This gives bodily injury protection to people in your vehicle if you are in an accident caused by an uninsured motorist. It does not include damage to property. Every policy which offers motor vehicle liability coverage must include this coverage.
- Underinsured Motorist.A coverage in an automobile insurance policy under which the insurance company will pay damages to the insured for which another motorist is liable if the motorist causing an accident has lower bodily injury liability limits than your UIM limits. The maximum dollars paid is then the difference between the two limits.
- Hired/Non-Owned Auto. Typically, hired and non-owned auto coverage is part of a commercial auto policy. It is liability and property damage insurance for a vehicle that is owned by an individual other than the company, but is used on a company’s behalf.
Hired Autos: Only those "autos" you lease, hire, rent or borrow. This does not include an "auto" you lease, hire, rent or borrow from any of your employees or partners or members of their households.
Non Owned Autos: Only those "autos" you do not own, lease, hire, rent or borrow that are used in connection with your business. This includes "autos" owned by your employees or partners or members of their households but only while used in your business or your personal affairs.
Workers Compensation is protection mandated by Wisconsin law for a worker and his or her dependents against injury and death occurring in the course of employment. It is not health insurance and is not intended to compensate for disability other than disability caused by injury arising out of employment.
The purpose of the worker's compensation system is to provide financial and medical benefits to the victims of "work-related" injuries and their families regardless of fault. The laws place the financial burden on the employer and ultimately the consumer. This compensation is generally the exclusive remedy for the injured employee.
Other Types of Insurance - There are many different types of insurance available. A few of the major categories are listed below with a brief explanation:
- Directors and Officers. This coverage provides protection to directors and officers from claims which arise from negligent conduct committed by them in their capacities as directors and officers.
- Errors and Omissions. This coverage, also known as professional liability, is available for numerous types of professionals. The coverage protects the professional persons or organizations from claims arising from failing to render professional services to their clients as expected of a person in their profession.
- Flood Insurance. This insurance can protect you in the event of the following: A general and temporary condition of partial or complete inundation of two or more acres of normally dry land area or two or more properties(at least one of which is the policyholder's property) from overflow of inland or tidal waters, unusual and rapid accumulation or runoff of surface waters from any source, mudflow or collapse or subsidence of land along the shore of a late or similar body of water as a result of erosion or undermining caused by waves or currents of water exceeding anticipated cyclical levels that result in a flood as defined above.
- Bonds. Types we can issue include but are not limited to: License and Permit, Contract, ERISA, Notary & Sheriff's Indemnity. Please contact our office for more details.
