Risk & Business

As a business owner your insurance portfolio is not complete without an umbrella . This gem of a policy is the best and most cost effective way to increase your protection. First the umbrella will give you extra limits above your liability, auto and work comp policies. Most of the time the cost is one third of the cost of regular liability limits. You can add layers to increase your protection based on the exposures you face. For example, you may be required to have high limits of liability coverage in order to win contracts. The umbrella policy is the ticket to get you to those required limits. Are you exposed to multiple claims in one year? If so the situation is a lot more "comfortable" with an umbrella in the wings.  In some circumstances the policy may even cover items that are not covered in your underlying policies. So add the extra protection,  at a cost that is usually less than your general liability, auto and work comp. ...

Many experts are predicting that over the next decade there will be over 50 billion devices connected to the internet. Business owners will need to adapt their insurance and risk management portfolios to protect themselves from the "internet of things". Here are some thoughts: Who owns the data?  With all the data going from devices to vendors , does the business owner still own that data and is the business liable if that data does harm? The internet is global, is your insurance protection worldwide?  Most will find out that it is not. Does this mean business owners will need global protection? Social engineering fraudsters dupe employees into being unwitting participants in cyber crimes. Does the business insurance policy cover these issues? Is the business owner liable? Denial of Service attacks on businesses is increasing, does the loss of income protection in an insurance policy cover if the business is shut down by a hacker? As you can see , business...

As a business owner you always run the risk of employee theft. Thank goodness most of it is small scale and rarely makes an impact on your bottom line. On ocassion however, a business owner can be victimized by a smart enterprising employee or employees. Let me give you some examples: FAKE VENDOR SCAM- the trusted office bookkeeper set up a bogus vendor account for office supplies (address and all). The business owner authorizsed the paying of invoices from this bogus account for over 5 years. The owner did not realize the invoices were to a fake vendor account until it was too late. When the scam was finally figured out the total loss was close to $100,000 !! THE ONE PIECE AT A TIME SCAM- the owner of a construction company would lose a few pieces of material every week at different jobsites. His crew were not doing a very good job keeping track of the inventory. Over the course of a few years this continued. Finally one of the employees ratted out the others and disclosed to the ...