Starting a New Business - RGIB Insurance Broking provides a wide range of new business insurance services for all types of new businesses just starting up.

Starting a new business from scratch is one of the biggest and most challenging things you might ever do in your life; it’s the gateway to financial success for your own future and that of your family’s.

In this regard, insurance is one of the most important considerations in the very early stages of developing a new business plan – you need to get adequate insurance cover without breaking the bank.

As your business grows, so will your insurance needs thus, getting the right insurance advice from the start will make it a lot easier to develop an ongoing risk management strategy through the use of insurance.

Indeed, getting your insurance advice from an 18y/o call-centre operator with one of the huge insurers like Suncorp or NRMA is fraught with danger; just ask the Queensland flood victims who purchased their insurance through such call-centres at cheap premiums; not cheap now because it didn’t cover them.

RGIB Insurance Broking is a leader in the field of assisting small businesses with their new business insurance needs; many new businesses at the start up stage have very little idea on what insurance they will need; ‘insurance –v– risk exposure’.

Many of our clients across Australia came to us in the early planning stages, some starting from their parent’s garage and now several years later are successful businesses, a couple of them multi-million dollar businesses.

As your business grows; we’ll be able to track your claims development history and use that data to assist you obtain the best insurance terms in the market each and every year; alternatively where things might go a bit pear shaped we’ll be able to help you identify the causative risks that need a different degree of cover and attention.

It’s all about managing your risk from day one – thus, your insurance policy has to meet your specific business’s insurance needs, because, while most insurance polices appear to be the same in title and opening explanation, the devil is always in the detail usually at the tail end of the policy’s wording ‘exclusions’ – the ‘small print’ as the numerous victims of floods and bushfires have claimed of the biggest insurance companies when they weasel out of paying claims.

‘These companies didn’t get huge by paying out all their money on claims’

Types of Insurance You Will Likely Need at First

Public & Products Liability

Most businesses will require Public & Product Liability Insurance as a bare minimum; depending on the nature of your business, whether you’re planning to operate from a retail shop, office or from a home office, even a mobile business; you will likely require a broadform of liability cover to protect against claims from such things as;

• Bodily injury caused to customers and the like;
• Property loss and damage caused by you.

The standard limits in Australia these days are around $10,000,000 cover.

Products Liability is also an important feature, because laws in Australia can tangle you up in a plethora of confusing and conflicting laws that in some cases can hold you liable as a manufacturer even though you didn’t manufacture the product – work that one out!

Material Loss Cover - Property

This type of insurance is designed to cover your business premises, generally as a leaseholder; it could be for retail premises and/or an office covering the furniture, fixtures, fittings and business equipment & property against a range of defined perils such as:-

and more……. it’s crucial to get the right terms of cover as this is a particularly misunderstood area of insurance – every insurance company’s cover is different but, they all call their policies by similar and/or the same names.

Business Interruption Insurance

If you lease on a shop of office, and/or have equipment on hire purchase, lease or on finance,  you and your new business will have a defined and enforceable financial obligation. If for any reason you can’t operate your business to generate the income necessary to meet your financial obligations, you run the very real risk that the lenders won’t wait till things sort out - they’ll come after you to get that money you are committed to pay.

So, it is important to insure for ‘business interruption’ – you can insure for the basics such as for rent, lease costs of equipment and wages of necessary employees including for yourself [that is pretty cheap] or, you can insure for ‘gross turnover’ and even for Loss of Profits.

In some cases where banks lend money, they will insist on you getting this type of cover, but if you can get by with a minimum level of cover that will usually be the best option for a new business just starting up.

Professional Indemnity Insurance

There are many independent consultants out there providing a wide range of services; and in most cases professional indemnity insurance is required under the terms of contractual arrangements. This area of insurance and risk management has experienced huge growth in the past several years – and along with it, a huge number of disputes ending up in Courts.

Just because a Professional Indemnity policy is called a Professional Indemnity policy on the front cover of an insurance contract, you can bet your bottom dollar that each policy will contain different and varying terms and conditions of cover with restrictive exclusions of what is and is not covered.

Professional Indemnity is often call called PI Insurance – it’s a mine field for anyone relying on the title of the insurance contract as an explanation of cover; these types of policies are very technical and require expert advice.

Contractors & Sub-Contractors

Each Contractor whether the principal contractor to a contract or a Sub-Contractor to the principal contractor is an individual legal entity in their own right. Most liability related insurance polices exclude cover to sub-contractors under the principal contractor’s insurance.

In many cases disputes arise where a principal contractor has told the sub-contractor that they are covered under their insurance policy however, when it comes to crunch time the insurer tells them otherwise.

It’s a horrible experience for anyone to be left facing huge legal and insurance claim bills without the protection of insurance. So many new businesses are based on the independent contractor model thus, if you’re a contractor just starting out in a new business you must get the right advice and the right cover. ‘the courts are full of such disputes between mates’ inevitably sending one of them bankrupt.

Income Protection Insurance

Imagine putting all your effort and hard earned savings into starting up your new business and after several weeks or moths you suffer an injury or illness that prevents you working in your business. Unless you have trained trustworthy staff, and a healthy bank balance things could turn very ugly, very quickly.

While Business Interruption insurance will pay the necessities, what about your own home and domestic expenses, rent, car payments, health cover, the mortgage, kids and school expenses? …. and the list goes on.

If you’re going into a new business, you really must have Income Protection insurance; you can start out with a minimal cover to pay the essentials – then as your business grows and becomes profitable you can increase the cover to one with all the bells and whistles, including Life insurance and Trauma cover protecting your income up to 65 years of age.

                        The List goes on and on…………….

But, in reality a new business just starting out only needs what it needs – nothing more nothing less – but, what a new business most importantly needs is advice on their insurance requirements and that’s what we can assist you with.

RGIB Insurance Broking is a nationwide insurance company; we’re not so big as not to care about new businesses of a micro and small business nature, similarly we can assist large complex business with their insurance needs as well.

Please feel free to contact our head office to discuss your new business insurance requirements. There is lots of information on our website for new and established  businesses.