Business insurance is for business

One point which can trip new businesses up is being asked to describe "what do you do?". I've met a couple of small businesses who had a great deal of difficulty obtaining simple advice and insurance to match.

The first person described his activities as "handing out flyers in a mall", and had a devil of a time finding an insurer willing to provide public liability cover. By taking the time to discuss, though, I discovered that the client was actually a book author, looking to promote his new book, and a reading he was giving at a book shop.

Both of these activities are insurable for an author, since they're part and parcel of what you'd expect a new author to do. And so I was able to help with affordable public liability insurance to satisfy his needs.

Market based businesses

The same goes for market-based businesses too. If you talk to the as seen on TV! direct insurer call centre staff about your market-based business, you'll find difficulty in obtaining insurance. But despite what their computer tells them, markets aren't any more perilous or difficult than any other shop.

So again, when discussing your business for the purposes of insurance, stick to describing your business, not what you physically do as part of that business. If you sell handmade clothes, you're a clothing manufacturer & retailer, not a marketeer.

As long as your physical activities are normal for the business described, your insurer will be expected to insure the outcome of those activities. It's only where you're doing something far outside the normal that you need to describe those physical activities.

Get specialist advice

But if you're doing something far outside the normal then the direct market insurers aren't for you anyway! Talk to a specialist like Cleversure for no-nonsense risk management advice and help navigating the process.