Is Your Home Business Adequately Protected?
More people than ever have opted to work from home and may never set foot outside their door to earn a living. Some may have been forced into this approach due to layoffs or downsizing, while others may have been offered the solution by an employer. Many other employees may have decided that they want to adopt the entrepreneurial approach. Either way, they certainly get to avoid the morning commute and can, to a certain degree, dictate their own hours as well. In a world where it is often difficult to make ends meet, this can lead to a number of significant savings, but it may be important to get the right amount of coverage, nonetheless. If you are in this position, do you need to consider any special form of insurance?
Levels of Protection
You may pay good money for homeowners' insurance and feel that you are adequately protected in almost any eventuality. Yet, you may need to be a little more specific and look at your potential exposure from a business point of view.
Understanding Liability
For example, do you ever invite a client to your home to discuss a potential project, or to look at some of your existing work? If so, then you may be exposing them to a risk for which you are not covered. Imagine if they were to trip over something as they came into your house and sustained an injury. They would seek compensation to help deal with the associated bills and you may find that this situation was not covered by your regular policy. You certainly need to look through your existing paperwork carefully as some of these policies do indeed exclude any business-related claims.
Separate Insurance
In this case, you would need public liability insurance made to be specifically related to your business if you were to be as safe as possible. They would then be able to claim against that insurance policy and you wouldn't face any potential disaster.
All Risks
Remember, risk comes in all shapes and forms. Visitors or clients may not injure themselves, per se, but something of value may be damaged when they are on your premises. Your dog could decide to play with their expensive computer when you were otherwise engaged and render it useless. Can you afford to replace it out of your pocket? And what about all the important business data that was held within?
Investigating the Options
Talk with your insurance broker to see what types of coverage are available in your situation. It's better to be safe than sorry, after all.