Home Based Business Insurance

How to Fully Protect Your Home Business

Did you know that a home insurance policy usually doesn’t protect a home based business from risks and damage?

That’s why it’s so important to consider getting additional coverage.

Home based business insurance is designed to fill in that gap. It can help cover your business’s property, equipment, and potentially even client information that’s stored in your home office. Plus, if a client or vendor visits you and gets injured on your property, it can help cover medical and legal expenses.

Don’t assume that your homeowners policy will cover you — because it usually doesn’t. At Simply Business, we can help you find coverage at an affordable rate. This way, you can enjoy peace of mind knowing that you’re covered if an unexpected accident or event occurs.

As a leading online insurance platform, we work hard to make getting covered fast and easy for our customers. Just complete our online quote form, where we’ll ask you simple questions about your home business and offer a selection of quotes for you to compare.

Best of all, it can take under 10 minutes.

What is Home Based Business Insurance?

It’s a type of coverage that can typically help cover the costs of an unexpected accident, injury, or property damage. It’s designed to help cover your business if it’s primarily located within your home.

Because most traditional homeowners policies don’t cover incidents relating to a home business, it’s important to get additional coverage.

This way, you can feel confident knowing you’re covered if something untoward happens!

Most policies include general liability (GL) insurance. This policy provides protection against costs associated with third-party accidents, property damage, and bodily injury to third parties, like clients or vendors.

Here’s how it can work: Let’s say you’re a professional photographer with a home studio. You typically invite clients to your home studio for family photoshoots. One day, a client trips and falls on ice while walking into your home, resulting in a trip to the emergency room.

After the incident, you find out your client is suing you for the cost of medical bills and ongoing care.

In this case, your homeowners policy probably wouldn’t protect you, since the person came to visit your home for business purposes.

But GL coverage would protect you!

So if you operate your business from your home, you need additional coverage. You can’t count on your homeowners policy to provide coverage.

A general liability policy can usually cover:

• Bodily injury to another person (like a client or vendor)
• Third-party property damage
• Personal and advertising injury
• Medical expenses
• And more

Here’s what general liability usually doesn’t cover:

• Damage to your own property
• Professional services
• Workers compensation or injury to your employees
• Damage to your work
• Motor vehicles while in business use
• Expected or intentional injury or damage
• And more

What Other Insurance Should I Get?

Depending on what you do, you may want to get additional policies. For example, if you offer professional services, like bookkeeping or marketing, you may want to get professional liability coverage.

And if you have employees (even just one worker), you probably need workers compensation insurance too.

Take a look at the most common policies home based business owners buy.

Professional Liability Insurance

People who offer services to clients may need to purchase a professional liability insurance policy, as well as a GL policy. Examples of service-based businesses include, but aren’t limited to:

• Bookkeepers
• Accountants
• Website designers
• Photographers
• Business consultants
• And more

These are owners who provide a professional service that’s at risk for claims of negligence, errors, copyright infringement, and other accusations.

Whether you’re at fault or not, a professional liability policy can help protect you from claims of errors and negligence. It can even help cover the costs of hiring a lawyer and any damages you may incur, up to your policy limit.

Here’s an example of how it can work. Let’s say you’re a bookkeeper, and a client gets audited by the IRS because you inadvertently neglected sales tax information. The client is furious and sues you for negligence, claiming that they wouldn’t have been audited if you had included the sales tax information on their income tax return.

If you don’t have a professional liability policy, you may be on the hook to pay thousands of dollars in damages. This amount can be devastating for any owner, but especially for small businesses. Make sure you’re protected in case you find yourself in a situation like this one.

Instead, get professional liability insurance early on — before you start working with clients.

Here is what it usually covers:

• Negligence or alleged negligence
• Legal defense costs
• Omissions or alleged omissions
• Copyright infringement
• Claims and damages
• And more

Here’s what it usually doesn’t cover:

• Intentional acts and omissions
• Property damage
• Medical expenses
• Bodily injury
• False advertising
• Employment matters
• Patents and trade secrets
• And more

Workers Compensation Insurance

Do you have employees? Even just a part-time or seasonal worker? If so, you may want to include workers compensation insurance in your coverage.

This type of coverage is designed to help cover the costs of an employee getting sick or injured on the job. It can even help cover a portion of lost wages.

Home based businesses can have employees, too. And if you’re one of them, you should get serious about your coverage. Depending on where you live, it may even be required by law.

Here’s why. A worker’s comp claim can be very costly, especially if it involves an injury or accident. In fact, the average workers compensation injury claim is $41,000!

And, in 2018, Americans reported $170.8 billion in workers compensation claims.

Fortunately, workers compensation coverage is designed to protect you and your business. It can help cover the costs associated with:

• Medical payments
• Lost wages
• Rehabilitation expenses
• Death benefits
• And more

Wondering what other coverage you may need?

At Simply Business, we can help you find the right coverage. When you complete our online quote form, we’ll ask you questions to better understand what you do. Then we may show you bundled policies that can provide protection for home based business owners.

Is Home Business Insurance Right For Me?

Take a moment to ask yourself these important questions:

• Do my clients or vendors visit my home?
• Do I keep client or employee information on my computer?
• Do I have business inventory or equipment at home?
• Do I bring business equipment, like my laptop, to work events?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you likely need coverage.

Many business owners who operate out of their homes make the mistake of assuming that their homeowners policy can protect them. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Most homeowners policies protect your personal assets — but not your business assets.

Keep in mind, if you report a claim related to your business, your homeowners policy may deny you coverage. And without a home based business policy, you may have to pay for the costs on your own.

This could be devastating, especially if it’s an expensive claim.

Your homeowners policy may help protect you if there’s an accident at your home that’s unrelated to your business. But if a client visits you, and gets injured or experiences property damage, your homeowners policy probably can’t help.

Plus, a homeowners policy usually doesn’t offer coverage for errors and omissions, and accusations of copyright infringement, libel, slander, and more.

Additionally, most small businesses are at risk for lawsuits. In fact, many small business owners say they’ve been threatened with or involved in a civil lawsuit. In today’s world, no one is immune — even if you did nothing wrong.

At Simply Business, we can help you find coverage that’s comprehensive enough to protect your operation and its assets.

It’s smart to protect yourself ahead of time by securing coverage. Many of these incidents are out of your control, so you want to prepare just in case. Getting comprehensive coverage is one way to help keep your business running for years to come.