Lombard Business Insurance
A local independent insurance agent can help you build a comprehensive policy package.
Jeff Green has held a variety of sales and management roles at life insurance companies, Wall street firms, and distribution organizations over his 40-year career. He was previously Finra 7,24,66 registered and held life insurance licenses in multiple states. He is a graduate of Stony Brook University.
In 2019, 965 businesses in Illinois filed for bankruptcy. In many cases, these bankruptcies could have been avoided if the companies had been covered by the right insurance policies. As a business owner in Lombard, you can protect the investment you have made in your company by covering it with a comprehensive business insurance policy package.
Buying business insurance on your own can be difficult and complex, but independent agents make it easy. These agents can perform a complete risk assessment on your company and can then recommend the best and most affordable policies to cover against each identified potential risks. Contact an insurance agent near you to learn more.
Why Do Businesses in Lombard, IL, Need Liability Insurance?
Even if the courts ultimately rule in your company’s favor, a liability lawsuit can prove very expensive. Business liability insurance is designed to protect your company by covering the associated court costs, legal fees, and financial damages if it is sued for a covered event.
You will need to be sure that your business insurance policy package includes the right products to cover against each of your company’s potential liability risks. Some of the many commercial liability products available for your consideration include the following.
- Premises liability insurance: This covers against third-party injuries, illnesses, and property damage caused by accidents on your business property for which your company may be deemed responsible.
- Product liability insurance: This covers against third-party injuries, illnesses, and property damage caused by defects or design flaws in products your business produces, sells, or promotes.
- Liquor liability insurance: This covers businesses that sell or serve alcoholic beverages. It is important because if an intoxicated patron goes on to cause injuries or property damage to others, Illinois’ dram shop laws allow the injured party to sue the business that provided the drinks.
- Cyber liability insurance: This covers your company’s financial responsibilities and restitution costs if cybercriminals install skimmers on your credit card readers or hack into your computer system and steal customer data such as financial and personal details.
- Employment practices liability insurance: This covers against accusations of perceived illegal employment practices such as wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, and retaliation by current, former, or prospective employees.
- Professional liability insurance: This covers individuals in professional positions against charges of negligence, failure to act, errors in judgment, and other professional mistakes that may have led to financial losses or other damages to their clients.
Talk to an independent insurance agent in Lombard to learn more about these and other commercial liability policies that may be a good fit for your business. Your agent can help you be certain that your company is properly covered against all of its liability exposures.
What Insurance Products Cover Your Business Property?
Businesses in Lombard are most likely to experience loss or damage to business-owned property due to hazards such as accidental fires, property crimes, electrical storms, windstorms, hail, freezing temperatures, ice accumulation, and blizzards.
Fortunately, each of these risks is covered by commercial property insurance, which is a standard part of every business insurance policy. This insurance is designed to cover your company’s assets such as merchandise, inventory, office furniture, supplies, computers, tools, display cases, and outdoor signs.
You may need to add specialized property insurance policies to your business insurance policy package for your business property to be fully covered against all its potential risks. For instance, your insurance agent may recommend supplementing your commercial property insurance with products such as these below.
- Flood insurance: This covers against flood damage, which is excluded from coverage by commercial property insurance. Business owners can purchase up to $500,000 in structural coverage and $500,000 in contents coverage when they purchase an affordable commercial flood insurance policy through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
- Inland marine insurance: This covers your company’s portable property whenever it is being transported to or from another location or is being temporarily stored away from your place of business, such as at a jobsite or in a warehouse.
- Bailees insurance: This covers your customers’ valuable property whenever it is in your business’s care, custody, or control. This insurance is ideal for companies that perform services like repair, maintenance, or alteration work on their customers’ expensive items.
- Boiler & machinery insurance: This covers the cost of repairing or replacing your company’s essential machinery if it breaks down or malfunctions. This insurance can also cover any revenue losses associated with the breakdown.
A local independent insurance agent can help you be sure that all of your business assets are suitably covered and that your coverage limits are high enough to cover the cost to rebuild, repair, or replace when necessary.
Is Business Interruption Insurance a Good Idea in Lombard, IL?
Although the risk of tornado activity in Lombard is lower than the state average, it is still 47% greater than the national average. A major disaster like a tornado or a structure fire can do more than just damage your business property. It can also force your company to close down for several weeks while repairs are made.
Disasters in Illinois
- Number of federally declared disasters in IL since 1953: 63
- Most common reasons for declared disasters: Severe storms, floods, and tornadoes
- Average number of tornadoes in IL per year: 54
- Amount paid out in business insurance claims in IL in 2019: $16,998,439,000
If your company must close for an extended time due to damage caused by a covered event, business interruption insurance can help by providing a continuation of income until you are able to resume normal operations.
This insurance can provide the funds necessary for your company to continue paying regular monthly expenses such as rent, bills, loan installments, and employee salaries during the times it is temporarily unable to generate revenue.
Talk to a local independent insurance agent to learn more about business interruption insurance. Your agent can help you determine whether this optional coverage is a good fit for your Lombard business.
Do Businesses in Lombard Need Workers’ Compensation Insurance?
If your employees are injured on the job, or if they develop an occupational illness due to exposure to toxins at the workplace, your business can be held responsible for covering any necessary medical treatments and lost wages due to necessary time taken off of work.
In cases of severe injuries and illnesses, these costs can grow quite large. Fortunately, workers’ compensation insurance is designed to cover them.
With very few exceptions, all employers in Lombard are required by Illinois state law to cover their full-time and part-time employees with workers’ compensation insurance.
Rates for this insurance are based primarily on the types of jobs your employees do and the likelihood that they will be seriously injured while doing them. It would therefore cost a lot more to insure a construction worker than it would to cover a receptionist at an orthodontist’s office.
When you are shopping for a good workers’ compensation policy, a local independent agent can help you compare policies and rates from a few competing providers. That way, you can be sure that you are getting a reliable policy at a competitive price.
What about Insurance Products for Employee Benefits Packages?
When it comes to recruiting a talented pool of employees, you can give your company a competitive edge by offering an attractive employee benefits package that includes perks like paid vacation time, sick time, an employer-matched 401(k) plan, and healthcare coverage.
When you are looking for the right insurance products to include in your employee benefits package, you will find that there are several different life insurance and health insurance policies available for you to choose from. This can make it difficult to determine which to buy.
A local independent insurance agent can go over the pros and cons of each of your various options, such as PPO, HMO, and managed care plans, so you can make an informed decision about which products make the best choices for your Lombard business’s employee benefits package.
Why Work with an Independent Insurance Agent in Lombard, IL?
A local independent agent can help you identify all of your company’s potential risks and can recommend the right kinds of policies to cover against them. Additionally, these agents can save you time and money by doing the comparison shopping for you. That way, you can be sure you are getting great coverage at a competitive price.
Set up a one-on-one consultation with an independent insurance agent with an office in Lombard to learn more. You will soon discover how easy it can be to obtain and compare a variety of customized business insurance quotes.
https://www.city-data.com/city/Lombard-Illinois.html
https://www.iii.org/insurance-topics/business-insurance
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts
https://www.fema.gov/disasters
http://www.naic.org/prod_serv/AUT-PB-14.pdf
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pages/alter-benefits-attract-retain.aspx
https://www.business.org/hr/benefits/top-reasons-to-offer-employee-benefits
https://www.nfib.com/content/legal-compliance/legal/workers-compensation-laws-state-by-state-comparison-57181