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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Business Insurance Quotes - Select the Ideal Business Insurance for Your Business

Business insurance quotes are the policy amount quotations offered by insurance companies that offer business insurance. Business insurance protects business owners from any liability in the event of any mishap or damage. The cost of any policy is never a standard one; it usually varies from company to company. The cost depends on the credit limits and the number of covers included in the policy. Therefore, the quotations for various types of policies differ. Different insurance types that you may come across are business, life, health, medical, home, property, and vehicle insurance, to name a few. Each type has different policy quotes and can offer different percentage of claims cover. Some of the quotes are higher than the ones offered by another insurance group. The higher cost may be genuine because of extra facilities and features, but, there are some quotes, which are unreasonably high for no extra cover or credit limits. To get the best quotes, it is always wise to compare and analyse the policies that are available in the market. This way you will end up enrolling for a best and relatively cheaper policy. You may compare insurance from free online business insurance quotes offered by various insurance groups. If you are not well versed with the insurance terms, you can even consult a broker to help you elaborate on the business insurance quotes. An insurance broker is an agent who will help you enrol into insurance policies. He will suggest various options available, compare the policies for you, and help you decide on the one that suits you the most. These brokers can help you negotiate the policy cost quoted in the insurance quotes.

Online Business Insurance Quotes: These quotes vary based on a few factors like the credit limit amounts, percentage of liability cover, number of risks enrolled, and policy periods, just to mention a few. They are higher when the number of risks covered in the policy is higher. You can not only compare insurance using the online insurance quotes tool, but also check for various options and combinations of insurance policies. Online facilities offered by insurance groups will usually allow you to enrol for business insurance policies. When you apply online, you will be asked to fill the online application forms and submit them along with required documents for verification. After the verification, if your application is valid, they will be forwarded to the processing department. When the processing is complete, they will email the insurance papers to you. You can either save them as a soft copy or take a print out and file it for your reference when needed. But, when you enrol for insurance policies using online facilities you may have to be extra cautious while checking the various terms and conditions mentioned, if you have any doubts regarding them, it is always better to clarify before enrolling for a business insurance policy.

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Understanding Taxi Insurance

There have been many occasions when people from Asia and other regions migrate to big cities in America, Australia and Europe. Here, many would like to own and run taxi businesses. The taxi services can be either public hire or private hire taxi services. The taxi businesses may be quite lucrative. But it would all go to waste if your taxi services are not adequately insured. Your taxi vehicles may fall prey to the road accidents. In such cases, the taxi vehicles have to be repaired and the taxi drivers have to be treated for injuries. So, for the incurred expenses, the insurance plans will be quite handy and efficient as well. But before you go ahead, you should know the adequate information about the concept of taxi insurance.

As there are two main types of taxi services, there are also two types of taxi insurance programs. One is the insurance programs for the public hire taxi services and facilities. This kind of insurance covers the damages and incidents that could affect the public hire tax services. Public hire taxi services are useful for the general public. If the cabs suffer from some sort of incidental damages, the taxi vehicles will be covered for the costs and expenses on repairs of the vehicles. The drivers will also be insured against the injuries in the accidents and so on. So, public hire insurance services can be a good way to protect and run your taxi business for long. You can opt for a good policy as well for your taxi business.

But there is also another insurance programs for the taxi businesses and taxi vehicles. This is the program of private hire taxi insurance. As the name suggests, the insurance is used for the private hire taxi services. These will be used only be individuals or firms for specific trips and also specific purposes. But there are some extra advantages and benefits for the taxi businesses which cater to a number of specific purposes and reasons. This is the feature of extra third person coverage. This means that the people, who have been injured along with the taxi driver in the accidents, will also be fully compensated for their injuries and medical care expenses. So, private hire insurance facilities are better than the public hire insurance services.

The taxi business managers have two options for their insurance programs. One is that they can opt to get each and every vehicle insured individually. Or they can choose to take a full-fledged insurance for the entire fleet of taxi vehicles. The second option of a fleet insurance is generally considered to be more convenient that the first option. This is because a fleet insurance application helps to save a lot of time and effort in submitting the driver's records and documents and the vehicle registration documents as well. At the same time, the fleet insurance program can also help to save money as it is considerably cheaper to take a whole insurance for the whole fleet rather than for just a few vehicles.

How Commercial Insurance Price Comparison Sites Compare Business Insurance Quotes

You may think that one commercial insurance price comparison site is much the same as another. Some people swear by them, others cannot stand them but not all price comparison sites are the same. There are two distinct types and each has its own benefits, advantages and disadvantages.

This is why different businesses and commercial enterprises have very different user experiences, depending upon which type of comparison or price aggregator site they have visited. They may well prefer one brand comparison site over another, purely because they prefer the way that particular brand's website works and this often has nothing to do with the quotes it returns.

In order to understand the large differences it is necessary to get under the bonnet and look at the anatomy of a commercial insurance price comparison website's internal engine.

Inside a Commercial Insurance comparison

Leaving aside the prices quoted which are subjective and variable, the major factor that differentiates price comparison sites user experiences, is the location of the rating and underwriting engine that produces the quotes.

This engine is the rules based logic that produces the commercial insurance quotes you see in your browser. It can be either local with centralised processing, or remote with what is known as distributed processing.

Centralised comparisons hold all the commercial insurance policy and rating information local to the web server where a prospective businessman can compare quotes.

Distributed comparisons have to visit each insurance company or business insurance broker website to retrieve quotes and all the policy information which is then displayed on the comparison website. Distributed processing comparison websites are known a 'Scraper sites' because they scrape data from the fields of one form and pass it into equivalent form fields at a remote web server.

When someone visits a commercial or business insurance comparison website, they will initially be asked what type of cover they require for their business. For example a shop or office policy or perhaps just simple public liability cover. Commercial insurance is particularly difficult to underwrite, so the type of policies that are available on Internet tend to be packages where blanket levels of cover can be offered, in order to be suitable for the widest range of business activity and customers.

However all commercial risks have some common elements such as levels of cover required, which need to be captured in order to auto-rate and make comparisons. These are called rating factors.

Comparison Screens

The user is next presented with a screen that has been tailored to ask specific questions that are necessary to rate the chosen commercial insurance. Both types of comparison website offer variations on a theme for data capture, however both will use a typical form that requires filling.

As a businessman completes the online application form, the data entered requires validation. The values entered need to fit standardised parameters and exclude all those businesses that do not fit this standardisation. This is achieved by limiting the choice of the user. For example, the comparison site when asking the applicant to describe their business activities or trade type, will only present to the user the businesses and trades it can quote for, in the form of a drop down list.

Centralised processing comparisons are much more likely to do all the policy and underwriting criteria validation on the front-end form, with for example validation of postcodes, addresses, eligible business types, and numerical validation on sums insured. The centralised comparison system uses Javascript and calls to local tables This gives the system a very quick user experience and assures that the system can return a range of quotes for the prospective business. It also allows the system the provide as much data about available polices before the quotation process is complete, because it knows as the form is being filled out, what policies offer what covers for each of the questions asked.

Conversely, scraper processing sites need to feed data into the screen fields on a variety of remote websites, all which tend to require varying details and user input, in various sequential orders. Scraper sites therefore need to ask many more questions in order to be able to try to satisfy as many rating factors and underwriting rules required for as many different competing companies. The complexity of a commercial insurance policy often requires certain information that you cannot ask for later in the process.

Rating

When all the information has been collected, the data is sent to the rating logic to calculate the rates and premiums.

Trade, Turnover and other factors provided by the user about the business are used by the system to define coverage, policy clauses, excesses and limits of indemnity, which can be returned to the user as part of a quote offer.

Rating tables are held online either locally for a centralised rating system or on the remote websites for scraper style distributed rating. The premium price is calculated from the values of the rating factors provided by the user when compared against the online tables. The actual rating factors vary depending upon the type of commercial insurance policy being applied for, suffice to say that if the system is asked to provide quotes for commercial property cover, the risk address postcode will be used to define the theft rate and flood rate, which combined with the rate for the risks of fire for the trade concerned, will produce a rate for the property perils risk. Rates for commercial property, for example, are usually expressed as percentages per hundred pounds of sum insured.

Processing

It is at this point in the process that the differences in the two types of comparison site become apparent to the user.

When a comparison rating engine sat on a local server, processing is much faster. A locally rated panel will return quotes commercial insurance quotes and covers instantly. The system has all it needs at hand to calculate premiums and also return comprehensive policy comparisons of cover and risk options in micro-seconds.

A scraper site however will consist of extensive 'middleware' processing, which inevitably slows down the process. The role of this 'in the middle' software is to communicate with the remote websites where the rates are held, and pass all the users details. It then needs to collect the quotes and associated data coming back from the broker or insurance company server and structure and order it into a webpage that shows a price comparison.

The process may take a few minutes when multiple business insurance providers are being asked to quote. The upside is that distributed processing scraper sites generally compare far more policies or companies offerings and more often than not, will return many more quotes. If you can be prepared to wait! You have to wait for the processing to complete on the remote brokers servers and for the quotes, excesses, and terms and conditional clauses to be returned to the comparison website..

Distributed processing comparison sites may have a lot more companies competing and returning quotes, although this does not necessarily mean more choice of commercial insurance. Quite often they are offering the same product from the same company, the only variance being a price differential.

Offering too much choice can also have its downside and create technical and promotional problems. Many of the smaller brokers offering more specialist business insurance propositions, have joined large, well-known brand name commercial insurance comparison sites that employ the scraper methodology. However they often complain that they do not have the server processing power to be able to handle a flood of multi-stringed requests for remote underwriting and processing and by time the quotes are returned to the comparison site, the user has already been offered perhaps thirty or more policy propositions and gone elsewhere.

Comparing Business insurance Quotes

After all the processing has been completed the quotes are presented to the user, usually in order of cheapest first.

Both types of quote and policy comparison site allow the user to compare prices and premiums quoted, however only the centralised sites allow in-depth policy comparisons and to make changes to the original data entered.

Locally centralised comparisons allow the user to compare premiums and also adjust the propositions, add or remove covers and tailor a policy to a particular business needs.

Scraper sites do not allow this as they require all the information beforehand and demand that the user chooses any options or additional covers before the quotation process.

In this sense they only provide a range of premium prices and attached policy conditions for the user to choose from. The scraper sites make no provision to compare policy covers, whereas a centralised local processing comparison site will have all the information to hand for a complete policy and cover comparison. These features are not available for a comparison site that uses remote underwriting. In order to do this it is necessary for the user to visit each individual site, make the adjustments and return to the comparison site to compare quotes, before repeating the process, which is obviously very time-consuming.

Security should be a concern for all those using commercial insurance comparison websites. Although all comparison sites use secure servers and SSL sockets for transmitting the information supplied about the business, by its very nature a centralised processing site will be more secure. With scraper sites your details are being passed around possibly to up to fifty or more different sites around the web, each which could be compromised at any stage of the data transmission, including payment. Furthermore passing your details to fifty companies is effectively adding your business details to fifty mailing lists.

In summary, the user experience is much faster and more informative for businessmen seeking to compare commercial insurance quotes if they use a centralised price comparison website where everything is in one place. Better deals may be had from a distributed processing scraper site, however the process is long-winded with too many questions and too much waiting time. Too often insufficient policy information is returned with the quotes for the prospective buyer to make an informed decision about which business insurance product to purchase.

Expanding a Business Also Expands Risks

The recession may be on its way to being over, but recovery is essential to getting many businesses back to the point where they may actually be making a profit, particularly restaurants, which saw a decline in business as many customers sought a way to save money during the recent economic crisis and reduced their visits to many of their favorite eateries.

While restaurants, including those in the New York area, are still finding it tough to bring back customers in the numbers they saw during times prior to the downward spiral, many are turning to innovations and expansion to grow their business.

While that can be a plus for many of those who are successful in accomplishing this, it can also open the door to unexpected liabilities that their current restaurant insurance policies were not designed to cover. New ventures often mean new risks and exposures.

Lack of Coverage Could Threaten Many Businesses

The possibility of a lack of appropriate coverage only becomes evident when a mishap occurs and a claim gets filed. For example, after someone has already threatened to sue for damages is definitely a bad time for a restaurant owner to discover they don't have sufficient coverage. If they had consulted with their insurance agent about their insurance needs before changing their business model they could have prevented a bad situation from occurring. Agents can ask key questions at renewal time, discover where new liabilities have come into place, and suggest additional coverages, thereby heading off this scenario and building a stronger relationship with their restaurant customers.

Here are some of the current trends that might put some restaurant owners at risk and the questions agents should ask their restaurant customers:

Mobility: Has the restaurant added any new services, such as delivery of meals using hired drivers using their own cars? Branching out their business: Is the restaurant starting a new line of business, such as catering or Food Trucks? Trendy foods: Has the restaurant begun introducing new menu items in order to attract more customers, such as: locally sourced foods, organic ingredients, or non-allergenic ingredients? Additional payment methods: Is the restaurant now accepting new methods of payment, such as online credit charges or smartphone purchasing?

By having the answers to these kinds of questions agents can offer customers a variety of options that go beyond the coverage required for an on-site restaurant operation. Restaurant insurance agents with experience in the food services industry can work closely with restaurateurs to make sure that they have the right "ingredients" in their policies.

Tips on Securing the Best Commercial Roadside Assistance Company

With a myriad of companies offering roadside assistance plans, how do you go about obtaining the best plan for your company's needs?

You're probably already familiar with the extensive benefits a roadside assistance plan can offer. From saving you hundreds of dollars in towing fees and minor repair costs to potentially saving your company thousands of dollars in lost business, should a disabled vehicle leave your employee stranded and unable to make his delivery or schedule appointment, a roadside assistance plan is a very valuable resource.

When a company vehicle, whether it be a commercial, fleet, construction, or rental vehicle is an important tool in conducting your business, you don't want to choose the wrong roadside assistance company that could leave you without it for hours, or even days. Finding yourself broken down on the side of the road is a helpless feeling, and you don't want to your employees to be in this scary situation either.

The right company can make a difference in turning a bad situation to at least a tolerable experience.

Finding and securing the best commercial roadside assistance company who meets your needs before trouble strikes, is imperative. Ask about the company's response time, and do some research to determine if this information is in line with their past and present customers' experiences. Check references and read user reviews to see what other members have to say. If you have a lot of company vehicles you'll need covered, find a provider who will offer discounts based on the number of vehicles. Instead of just picking one and hoping for the best, pick out a few different programs and compare them. Be sure to compare apples to apples by comparing quality, benefits and cost of the service. If you or your employees do a lot of traveling, ask about long-distance towing, traveling services, maps and routing and travel discounts. Call the toll free number the company provides for roadside assistance. How long does it take before you reach a live person? After narrowing down your options, talk to company representatives. Knowledgeable and friendly representatives are usually a sign of a good company. A helpful staff that doesn't hesitate to answer any questions that you have will give you a good idea as to the type of environment and quality of service they offer.

Signing up for a commercial roadside assistance company doesn't have to be painful: learn about your options and get the best service for your company vehicles.

Underwriting Insurability Criteria

Underwriting insurability criteria requires that actuarially the rates and premiums be determined with relative certainty. Otherwise the risk will be deemed uninsurable from the carrier standpoint. If the carrier is unable to price their products because of market conditions, regulatory constraints, or other environmental factors, the carrier might decide that this type of industry or classification is uninsurable from their standpoint. Below are some of the criteria that are used in underwriting.

Competitive criteria are always considered in this process. Even if the carrier can probably get a rate based on a tough risk exposure, if it is nowhere competitive no client is going to bother to purchase their products and services. So, if the carrier is not competitive sometimes they will just not bother with that industry.

Identifiable criteria is the another factor that is used in underwriting. Insured losses must be identifiable as to the time, cause of loss, place of loss, amount of loss, and responsible parties in order to determine whether this is a covered event. Potential losses that cannot be clearly identified will not normally be considered by an underwriter.

Predicting a loss is also used in this analysis. If losses cannot with a degree of certainty be predicted, then it is usually deemed uninsurable from insurance company's perspective. An example of this would be losses from nuclear explosion or radiation. The breadth and depth of those losses cannot be calculated as they could be global and last thousands of years.

The insurable risk also needs to be fortuitous. That's why in the areas of the country that are experiencing flooding that someone who wants to run out and purchase a flood policy won't be able to find it, as the flooding has already started.

The criterion includes the law of large numbers. If there's only one item of its kind that is looking for insurance, it probably is not insurable because it cannot be replaced or repaired. Generally speaking, the age-old axiom holds that insurance is based upon the law of large numbers. The smaller the number of insurable risks the tougher the risk and usually the higher the premium. The larger the numbers of risk usually leads to more competition and more insurance carriers competing for the business. Thus, the premiums are less in this class of business. Commoditization of most industries in our modern era has created larger units of exposure and less unique custom risk.

Insurable risks are accidental by nature, fortuitous events, and there needs large numbers of similar types of risk. In order to easily calculate the rates and premiums the risk should be easily identifiable as to time, place, and amount of potential loss. While we have discussed some general insurability criteria, each region of the Globe, each insurance carrier, and the specific risk in question can vary based on many circumstances.