Businesses change, so do industries and products.
Your annual insurance and risk review provide an important opportunity to make sure you have the right amount and type of cover for the coming year.
A quick annual check can help avoid any gaps or shortfall in your insurances, ensuring your major financial risks are protected or managed. Of course, if you plan on making important changes during the year, talk to your insurance adviser, they can make sure cover remains in place.
Quick Tips
Do the existing insurances cover your main risks?
Each year (or if you plan on changing your business) before renewing your insurance covers, talk to your insurance adviser about your:
You can choose to accept or reject risks or mange them, including by buying insurance. For example, you can choose to reduce your professional negligence limit of cover and increase your Cyber package, as your business changes.
From talking to you, asking questions and completing risk questionnaires, an insurance adviser can suggest ways to manage your risks, including risk management (higher excesses or reduced cover) or recommending additional insurance cover.
You can then make informed decisions about how to best financially protect yourself, the business and customers.
Material changes your insurers need to know
The material changes you need to tell your insurers to ensure continuing cover include:
Valuations – Check the Property & Equipment Sums Insured against Valuations
Regularly updating the insurance values for your building, machinery or equipment is important to ensure you have the right amount of cover.
Inflation, higher building materials, labour and import costs need to be considered when buying or renewing your insurance.
Policy covers and exclusions
A few key areas to look at include:
What are the main uninsured risks?
There should be a list of key uninsured risks, this will depend on your business and industry. Take the time to check these off, to ensure there are no gaps in cover which would leave the business financially exposed.
Valuations - Commercial Buildings & Machinery
It’s recommended that building, plant & machinery valuations be obtained from licenced specialists every couple of years to ensure that you have the right amount of cover, in the event of a claim. These should be provided to your insurance adviser to discuss with the insurer. Sums insured can then be updated, if needed.
Insurance Advisernet have agreed discounted rates from the following licenced valuers:
Online free Home & Contents calculators
We recommend using a free online calculator to check the amount of insurance cover for your home and contents. There are free calculators from insurers and banks, as well as from The Insurance Council of Australia.
Even a quick annual check can help to avoid any nasty surprises in the event your need to make a claim.
Why are Regular reviews important
Taking the time to review and discuss your insurance covers during the year or on renewal with your insurance adviser will help to ensure your key financial risks continued to be managed and insurance cover remains in place.
Irecon sponsoring and supporting local community at the West Tigers annual golf day.
An Irecon team attended the Bellrock Broking third annual Charity Golf Day in support of Cancer Council.
A great day out at Pennant Hills golf club for a fantastic cause.
As a business owner, you may be weighing up the pros and cons of hiring full-time employees or contracting out some of the work to individuals. But have you considered the risks and impact on your insurance cover and talked to your insurance adviser about your plans?
Hiring individual contractors can be cost-efficient and fill knowledge gaps in specific areas or projects. However, additional risks to manage and insurance covers to update include workers’ compensation, professional indemnity, public liability and management liability.
What is the Risk?
When you hire contractors, you are delegating certain tasks and responsibilities and taking on a person who can be deemed your employee in some states and territories.
If they make a mistake, don’t meet your requirements or get injured, then you are likely to be held at least partly responsible for any injury, losses or damages that occur. Many insurance policies exclude injury to contractors or loss or damage caused by contractors, so it’s recommended that you talk to your insurance adviser to understand the risks and manage any gaps in cover.
Relying only on the contractor to have their own professional indemnity or public liability insurance probably won’t provide sufficient protection for you or the company. They won’t have the same amount of insurance, leaving you to pick up the pieces.
If you engage contractors and external workers, you will likely have a legal and statutory duty of care to the workers. This duty of care can be best managed by creating a contractor management system, which includes checking to see if they have appropriate insurances in place.
Manage the Risk
Your insurance adviser is a professional that can help you manage the risk of engaging contractors, both through engaging professionals to assist in reviewing or updating your contractor management system and notifying your insurers of the use of contractors. You can then decide how best to manage the risk of hiring contractors and update your insurance as needed.
Contractor management system
This document sets out the procedures that need to be followed when you hire a contractor or external worker. It should include the steps taken to select the contractor or external worker, guidelines for their induction and supervision when onsite. You will need to ensure that all legislative and industry requirements for maintaining a safe work environment are addressed in this document. Free checklists (including Inductions, Toolbox meetings, Risk Assessments, and Competency) can be found on your State or Territory WorkCover website.
Insurance
Hiring contractors and external workers create additional risks that must be discussed with your insurance adviser. Most insurance policies will need to be updated, and your may need to consider additional insurance covers, such as workers’ compensation for the contractor, extending your professional indemnity to cover mistakes made by the contractors, or a worker-to-worker extension for your public liability. Management liability should also be considered to provide personal protection for the directors, executives and managers against legal action and damages relating to the business.
Get the Right Advice
Most businesses hire contractors or engage external workers, so it’s important to get the right advice about managing the risks to protect the contractor, your customers and your business.
Lack of the right workers’ compensation cover for contractors can be very expensive. The business could be responsible for paying all medical bills, plus any lump sum damages if the person is permanently injured, for an injury. In addition, your managers could be personally liable for fines and penalties.
Your insurance adviser is a professional that can work with you so that you can make an informed decision about the risks, and also recommend required changes to your insurance cover.
Contact us today for professional advice and assistance.
Step right up! 🎪
We celebrated 15 wonderful years in business with a night under the big top, bringing a little magic and fun to a milestone moment. The circus-themed celebration was filled with laughter, connection, and memorable moments that reflected the people and relationships at the heart of our journey. We’re grateful to everyone who’s been part of the ride and look forward to the next milestone together.
