Insurance is a complex business, requiring expertise at various levels. There are a number of companies in South Africa whose speciality is dealing with companies in the business community, providing them with the broad range of insurance services that the average business will need. It is fair to say that the business insurance shares some common ground with personal insurance needs of an average family. However, depending on the nature of company’s activities, their needs can verge off in directions that the average family have never heard of.

Every business will have their “bread and butter” type of insurance policies, such as insuring the property or properties in which their business is housed, insuring their fixtures and fittings, their cars and even their machinery. There are even some businesses that subsidize or even fully provide health and life insurance policies for their key employees as well as pension schemes and endowment policies.

These categories of insurance policies will be fairly standard in every private business. The only difference will be the size of the business, the number of staff employed, the type and value of their equipment, and the nature of their activities. Businesses fall into several categories. Manufacturing, distribution, services and sales. Each category of business will have their own specific insurance needs and a professional insurance broker will need to provide the answers to each of these needs.

For example, a manufacturing company will usually have a larger number of employees than most other categories. The bulk of their employees will be working on the shop floor where there is an element of risk of work injury. Factories need to make sure that they have sufficient cover for their workers in the event of an accident, as well as insuring their valuable machinery.

Companies that manufacture need to sell their products, and they generally do so by dealing through retailers or distributors. The difference between the two is that a retailer will deal with the public and distributors will deal with trade customers. The subtle difference is that retailers need to establish outlets where the public can come to view the goods on display. Retailers are responsible for the wellbeing of the public while they are in their store and are require take out appropriate insurance policies to cover themselves in the event of an accident.

Other areas of insurance which are specific to the business community cover issuing credit to trade customers. There are policies that insure companies against bad debt. In other words if the company does not get paid, they call on their insurance company to help them cover their debt. This can be a very expensive type of policy and only the largest of companies, who can be exposed to serious debt, generally can justify taking such a policy.

Another type of policy which can be very expensive but possibly very worthwhile for a medium to large sized business, is consequential loss insurance. This means that if their business premises are placed out of action by fire or flood or any other reason out with their control, the insurance company, who will probably have covered their building, its contents, and staff and so in under separate policies, will also only insure the business for any profits lost during the period that they are inactive.

Consequential loss is one of the most complexes of business insurance policies and is probably the best indication of how complex getting business insurance companies to handle the intricacies of the industry.