PHONE : 1-888-242-4675 | E-MAIL : Info@insureyourcompany.com
Business Type :
Login
Best In-Class Business Insurance for Technology Firms & IT Consultants
If your employee is in a car accident on company time or in a company vehicle, are you responsible as an employer? What insurance is available to protect you in a work-related car accident?
It can depend on the particular circumstances, but there is a good chance you are responsible for accidents by employees in company cars or on company time. There is a doctrine in the law called “respondeat superior,” which means “let the master answer.”
In other words, a business owner is held liable in such cases in many cases. The same would be true in that a restaurant is held liable if a waiter spills a bowl of soup on a customer and a plumbing contractor is liable if a worker doesn’t install pipes correctly.
Various state courts have held to this statue, but they have also ruled that a company is not automatically responsible for all conduct of an employee during work time.
Even though an employer is often responsible for accidents on work time or in a company vehicle, he or she is usually not responsible for an accident by an employee on the way to work under a rule called the “coming and going” rule.
In Taylor Vs. Toyota, however, the California Court of Appeals ruled a car dealership should pay for injuries caused by an accident when an employee running a personal errand, using a car from the dealership, rear-ended another vehicle because the dealership had given the employee an implied or express permission to use it. Even though the dealership had procedures to keep track of cars used for personal errands, the court ruled the business had not taken adequate steps to ensure employees were not using cars for personal errands.
Employers may even be held liable for an employee’s accident on the way to a company picnic even though attendance is only “incidental” to work duties.
What kind of insurance is available to protect your business in case an employee of yours is in a work-related car accident? You can cover either all autos your business owns; all cars your business owns, plus vehicles it leases or hires; or all cars used for your business, including those your company does not hire, lease, or own.
There are a number of types of coverage you can buy:
Workers’ compensation will pay for an employee’s medical bills, out-of-pocket medical bills, and a portion of lost wages, if he or she is hurt while driving a company vehicle within the scope of his or her employment. It does not pay for pain and suffering. If the accident results in disability, workers’ comp will pay a settlement award.
In many cases you, as a business owner, are responsible for work-related car accidents. In addition, the law says you are responsible if you knowingly allow an unsafe driver to use one of your cars. To avoid issues that could potentially harm your business, it’s important to make sure you have the proper insurance in the first place to deal with such unfortunate events.
When it comes to running a landscaping business, there are landscaper insurance essentials you need in order to protect yourself, your employees, and your business.
These policies are the important ones to have so that you have a solid business plan that caters to your needs and ensures that you have a safety net just in case something should happen that threatens your livelihood.
There are a couple of insurance policies that are must-have for your landscaping business. These include general liability and employers’ liability.
General liability insurance protects your business from lawsuits that come from customers who may sue you due to what they consider negligence from your product or service, or something that happens while on company property.
Employers’ liability insurance protects the business from employees who may bring a lawsuit for a variety of reasons. These can include things like automotive liability, pay discrepancies, injuries and damages, and accidents that happened on the job. This even covers lawsuits where an employee is injured while at a customer’s property or was injured in a company vehicle while on the job.
There are other policies that are important to landscaping businesses. These depend on your individual circumstances and if they apply to your business.
This insurance policy protects a company’s assets and pays for obligations—medical costs, for example—incurred if someone gets hurt on your property or when there are property damages or injuries caused by you or your employees.
This insurance is for if you have a place of business and were to lose it due to fire, earthquake, flood, or some form of loss where the business is no longer viable.
This type of insurance is pretty self-explanatory. It helps in case of theft, whether employee or criminal acts of theft, and protects your equipment investment.
Mechanical breakdown insurance covers the cost of repairs if your equipment breaks down and you suffer a loss of income. Some policies cover repairs but exclude regular maintenance and wear and tear.
This is not a typical form of insurance, but it does protect the business in case of counterfeit checks. One way around this option is to only accept cash or credit cards, but if you do decide to take checks from customers who are used to paying that way, this is a policy you may want to consider.
This is a policy that is needed if you have company vehicles. With landscaping businesses, many typically have company trucks to transport equipment, so this one is a policy that is often needed to protect your investment.
Also known as errors and omissions, this protects those providing a service from being responsible for the full cost of defending against a negligence claim made by a client, and for damages awarded such as in a civil lawsuit.
Inventory loss covers exactly what it states and protects the business if there is a loss through no fault of your own.
While your landscaping business may not need all of these policies, it is smart to at least get the basic ones first and then work on a few of the rest if they apply. For example, start out with general liability and employers’ liability, and if you have company trucks, consider commercial auto insurance as well.
The important thing is to make sure your business is protected as much as possible. If you are not sure, we can answer any questions you have. Simply contact us so we can help.
If you purchased your business insurance online, you probably didn’t have a single one-on-one encounter with an insurance professional. A cute, animated mascot or a sassy spokesperson may have encouraged you to visit the website, but that was that.
You may have initiated the online application process because it was convenient and that’s what you needed at the time. You most likely answered the basic questions, provided critical business data and information, affixed your digital signature, and pressed “submit” without any assistance at all. After that, it was a matter of waiting for an email with a policy number or additional instructions.
Easy, right?
Well, you may not have gotten the most fitting insurance for your business that way.
Technology has made it possible to get insurance without ever communicating with a real human. It offers a no-frills approach that is easy and convenient, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best option for you.
Online companies may put you in control of the process, but you might not realize you are missing out on the benefits of working with a business insurance agency.
Many insurance websites offer one-policy-fits-all/one-company-fits-all commercial insurance coverage, but you don’t have to accept it. One of the biggest benefits you receive from working with a business insurance agency is your right to make choices.
You have choices, but a business insurance agency doesn’t simply abandon you while you make important insurance decisions. Insurance agencies work with you throughout the underwriting process; they provide important information you need and they educate you on key insurance and business issues.
Independent business insurance agencies are not tethered to a single insurance company. They work for you. To give you a choice of policies and coverages, they establish working relationships with multiple insurance companies.
An agency acts on your behalf to protect your interests and get the best commercial policy for your circumstances.
A business insurance agency gives you access to knowledgeable insurance professionals who guide you through the application and underwriting process. When you file a claim, they answer your questions and advise you of your rights and responsibilities as a policyholder.
Agency professionals understand that your questions should never be farmed out to an offshore call center. And if you’re used to the impersonal experience offered by many insurance websites, you might be surprised to find that your dedicated insurance professional knows you by name.
Business insurance agencies handle only business clients. They spend years learning the nuances of commercial insurance policy provisions and make their expertise available to you. They understand the property and liability exposures companies face and the insurance coverages they need to properly insure those exposures.
Business insurance agencies put their experience to work for you as they search to find the insurance company that’s most compatible with your business needs.
An insurance agency is a business. The staff has first-hand business experience that gives them a working knowledge of commercial clients and their insurance needs. As business owners, they understand that retaining a client requires effort above and beyond issuing the proper insurance policy. They understand that keeping your business requires dedication, knowledge, attention to detail, and excellent customer service.
When you choose a commercial insurance policy, you make important decisions that affect your company’s financial security. You should have some control over the process, but you also need an insurance expert to advise you along the way.
So what are you waiting for?
A fire is potentially devastating for any business. Even with the best insurance policy in the world and every backup system you can imagine in place to protect critical data, a fire still has the potential to close down your entire business for days or weeks, creating a mess that will take months to clean up.
Avoiding fire, then, should be a high priority for your company—and a few basic fire prevention tips can make that easier.
An automatic sprinkler system is a great way to protect your business from fire. Having fire extinguishers in high-risk areas can also help create a layer of safety.
You’ll also want to be sure that you have a highly effective fire alarm system that is easy to recognize and understandable by all employees (including those who are deaf or blind).
It’s important to be sure that you maintain all of your equipment regularly so that if there is a fire, the equipment all works properly.
Do your employees know how to respond if a fire breaks out in the building? Make sure that you have an effective fire plan that will cover every area of response.
A fire plan should include:
Effective fire prevention is about far more than knowing what to do if a fire breaks out. It also includes taking the necessary steps to prevent a fire in the first place.
Keeping your business up to fire safety standards is one critical step in ensuring that your entire business remains as safe as possible. Of course, even the most careful planning can’t prevent every emergency! To protect your business in the event of a fire and provide for all of your insurance needs, contact us today. We’ll ensure that even if there is a fire, your business will be back up and running as soon as possible.
Offering health insurance can be a costly endeavor for any small business. Depending on the type of insurance, estimates place the cost per employee for the employer between $6,000 and $16,000 per year. With such a large costs, many small businesses tend to shy away from offering healthcare to their workers altogether. In fact, 51% of small businesses don’t offer health insurance.
But there comes a time when reversing course can actually benefit your business. Sooner or later, most businesses offer their workers healthcare—for one reason or another.
If you’re wondering when that time might come for you, here are 3 signs to keep an eye out for when it comes to offering health insurance to your employees.
Let’s begin with the most important reason. The Affordable Care Act outlines very specific stipulations that outline whether you need to offer insurance to your workers or not.
The three most important stipulations, as they relate to this question, are:
You can read more about these and other stipulations in this FAQ. If you don’t comply, you will be required to pay the IRS so-called Employer Shared Responsibility Provisions. Once your business meets the above stipulations, it makes fiscal sense to offer health insurance to your employees.
A growing business does not only mean you have to begin to inform yourself about the Affordable Care Act. If you are looking to hire new employees, offering health insurance is crucial to avoid them from joining the competition instead.
No less than 83% of jobseekers state that health insurance is a main consideration when choosing their next employer. If it is not part of your recruitment package, your company will be at a disadvantage.
As a result, you risk losing out on qualified and motivated employees. So if you are actively hiring for a growing company and recruiting talent for your workforce, offering health insurance is a crucial first step.
As you might imagine, health insurance is not only important for new hires. Your current employees are looking for it as well, and once they begin to actively let you know about it, consider it a sign to begin offering healthcare.
Experienced managers know just how crucial employee happiness and engagement is for any company’s success. Happy workers are more productive, as evidenced by a recent study that found productivity to go up by an average of 12% (and in some cases as high as 20%) simply by increasing their workplace happiness.
Add to that the fact that 66% of employees consider healthcare to be a crucial influencing factor in how they feel about their jobs. Especially as a small business or new startup, you may be able to get away with not offering healthcare for a while. But once your employees start asking for it, it may finally be time to offer health insurance.
Of course, a variety of variables also play in your decision. You can only offer healthcare if you can afford it, and understanding your options plays a large part in knowing just what you can afford. But if you run into one of the above signs, it may be time to contact us. Your workers and your company growth will thank you for it.
Mark Patterson, owner of PATCO Construction in Sanford, Maine, is one business owner who learned the value of cyber liability insurance personally. Cybercrimes committed against businesses like Patterson’s are on the rise, and he learned first-hand the value of insurance to protect against the crime.
Luckily, insurance is keeping up with this rise.
Patterson found out his company’s firewalls and anti-virus software did little to protect his small business as criminals hacked its email system and ordered money transfers from its bank account.
“Over the period of five consecutive nights, excluding weekends, $100,000 a night had been taken out of our checking account, and we were down about $545,000,” he remembered.
An additional problem was that his bank wouldn’t reimburse him. Although he finally won in court, most of the money he won back went towards legal expenses.
He then bought cyber liability insurance.
There is insurance available for every industry and even public entities. Cyber liability insurance for technology companies covers:
Public entities can also buy insurance that will protect them in case of exposure to:
Businesses are affected in a big way when they are the victims of cybercrime. For example, if a small business has a data breach, it can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to recover losses, not including legal fees. A business could have to notify its customers of the breach and provide them with credit monitoring services. In addition, it would be difficult to repair the business’s image and relationship with customers.
The right insurance can provide money for:
Not having these insurances can cripple a business and force a small company to close. If you have any questions about cyber liability insurance, feel free to contact us.
It might not be the most exciting part of opening a restaurant, but one of the most vital steps in opening a new eatery is getting insurance coverage.
There are many potential problems that you need to be prepared for in the food industry, ranging from equipment failures to slip-and-fall lawsuits. Depending on your restaurant’s location, you will need certain types of insurance to comply with local laws. You may also need insurance to qualify for bank loans and mortgages.
These types of insurance should be seriously considered when opening any type of restaurant.
This is important for protecting your restaurant from property damage resulting from a variety of disasters such as fire, wind/hail storms, vandalism, or smoke damage. Unfortunately, for coverage in the event of natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods, you may need to get specific types of insurance that cover those circumstances.
This probably goes without saying, but liability insurance is needed in case any person is harmed in your restaurant. Whether you or your staff are to blame or not, if a person gets sick after eating at your restaurant, you will want to be protected by liability insurance.
A restaurant has much greater potential to make profits when offering alcoholic beverages on its menu, but with this advantage comes additional risks. Most states require businesses that have a liquor license to carry liquor liability insurance. Also, liability coverage is important to have in case an intoxicated customer drives away from your establishment and comes to harm or hurts others.
You may want to have this insurance if your business has a company vehicle. Many restaurants use promotional vehicles and company cars. This may be covered by your general liability policy, but you should ask your insurance agent to be sure.
Most states require employers of any type of business to carry workers’ compensation. Workers’ comp protects the business when an employee gets injured at work. Check your state laws so you are aware of your compliance obligations. For example, it is required in New Jersey.
This may not seem directly relevant to the operation of a restaurant, but it may be necessary for you to carry life insurance to satisfy the requirements of your mortgage. Also, life insurance is important if you have a family and you want to make sure they are taken care of should something tragic happen to you.
The purpose of this insurance may be somewhat self-explanatory, but it is nonetheless worth mentioning. It’s vital for a restaurant to be covered against fire damage, especially considering the added risks involved with operating gas cooking appliances.
Depending on your circumstances, you may find that the standard types of insurance may not completely meet your needs. Luckily, there is an insurance policy for just about any type of object or circumstance. Just be sure to weigh the additional costs against the benefits of carrying these additional types of insurance.
Occasionally there are situations beyond your control where food either spoils or is exposed to various types of contamination. This insurance may not protect you from a class-action lawsuit, but it will help you recoup losses if you need to replace the food in your walk-in refrigerator.
Under some circumstances, when your business loses sales, this type of insurance may compensate you for financial losses. It’s important to understand the likely return on investment with this, given that in many cases the aggregate cost of the insurance payments may exceed the claim payouts. If you feel your business is at a particular risk for this type of loss, it may be a smart investment.
When looking over all these various types of insurance, the task of insuring your restaurant may seem somewhat daunting. When opening a new restaurant, it is important to have a knowledgeable and trustworthy insurance agent in your corner to guide you through the process. Experienced agents know the local laws and regulations, and can help you make the best decisions about the types of insurance that will safeguard yourself, your restaurant, and your customers.
If you run a business with hired workers, knowing the rules of workers’ compensation is vital. Learning about workers’ compensation in New Jersey doesn’t have to be challenging.
You’re probably already familiar with the basics of workers’ compensation, but here is a bit of a refresher. With this handy guide, you’ll be on your way to having all the tools needed to make sure that your business is compliant and safe from fines.
Workers’ compensation provides payment to employees in a variety of ways, including wage replacement, medical treatment, and permanent disability compensation. Workers’ compensation is a no-fault insurance program which covers death benefits should an employee die due to their job or employment.
While workers’ compensation is mandatory, it’s also an excellent benefit for the employer since the employee receives benefits no matter who is at fault. The company has to pay premiums which are needed as a protection against huge medical bills and can easily pay for itself after one major injury claim.
There are a couple of ways to obtain coverage for workers’ compensation:
Whether the company is a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or a corporation—all must provide workers’ compensation as per New Jersey regulations. Although some states have varying rules, this is fairly standard.
There are multiple benefits that protect the employees and this helps the company as well. These include:
This covers prescriptions, necessary medical treatment, and hospital services as long as the injury is related to the workplace.
Temporary total benefits are designated for those who are disabled for seven or more days. However, these benefits are retroactive and kick in dating back to when the injury first occurred. There is a statutory maximum rate and the payout to the employee is 70% of the average weekly wage.
This type of benefit starts after the temporary benefits session ends. It covers bodily impairment that is permanent and due to a job-related injury. This is paid out based on the injured person’s functional loss and is paid out weekly.
This type of benefit is for those who cannot return to work at all due to their work-related injury. This starts at 450 weeks and if the employee can show that they are still permanently injured, the benefits will continue. This is paid weekly and at the same 70% payout of the individual’s average weekly pay.
This benefit is for the dependents of an employee who dies from an illness related to work or a work-related injury. This includes funeral expenses up to $3500 as with other benefits. The death benefits are at a weekly payout at 70% of the employee’s average weekly pay.
If you have a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or a corporation in New Jersey and need help with workers’ compensation, simply contact us. We can also help you determine what other types of insurance you may need to best protect your business.
Adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor ncidi quia conseq uuntur magni dolores eos qurti uptatem sequi nesciunt.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute iruLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod
InsureYourCompany.com has been treating clients like family for over 15 years. You’ll never have to talk to an automated phone system—we have business insurance experts ready to provide personalized customer service, not only helping you with your insurance and employee benefits needs, but showing you how to be a smarter business owner.
If you are in the IT industry InsureYourCompany.com is the insurance agent you want to work with, we are technology insurance experts and have changed the way you do business. See below a list of professionals who we help today.
Lorem ipsum, or lipsum as it is sometimes known, is dummy text used in laying out print, graphic or web designs. The passage is attributed to an unknown typesetter in the 15th century who is thought to have scrambled parts of Cicero's De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum for use in a type specimen book. It usually begins with:
We believe in supporting our clients through every step of the insurance process. From choosing the right coverage to filing a claim, we are here to offer guidance and support. Request a free quote today and get coverage that meets your unique needs.
