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Are You Covered?
  • Your Building in Winter
    Winter brings the threat of freezing temperatures and harsh conditions to much of the U.S. Some places are well beyond the threat; it’s going to freeze—there’s no way around it. Such conditions pose unique hazards to commercial building owners. Following is some information on common winter threats and how they are addressed by commercial property insurance.
  • D&O Insurance:  Protection from Boardroom Liability
    Many people will celebrate the holiday by giving back to their community. Volunteering time or services to a company or non-profit organization may be a selfless act of generosity, but these acts of goodwill can also expose volunteers to possible lawsuits if they are making decisions on behalf of the organizations or company. Fortunately, there is a way to mitigate the exposure to lawsuits and continue lending a hand.
  • How much building insurance is enough?
    As a small business owner, you know the importance of preserving your assets. For many business owners, the largest single asset they possess is their building. Whether you occupy the building or operate as a landlord (or both), consider key exposures in your risk-management and insurance planning.
  • Don't Get Robbed Twice!
    One of the often confusing attributes of crime insurance coverages is that the terms used in the insurance policies reflect legal definitions, not the meanings we assume in everyday conversation.
  • Insuring Income: The Lifeblood of Your Business
    If someone asks you if your firm has a catastrophe plan, how would you respond? Would your answer sound something like this: “There’s nothing in writing, however, if something happened that compromised our ability to earn we have a good idea what we would do.”
  • Business interruption insurance
    Would you believe that there is an insurance product specifically designed to help insure a solid, sustainable profit? In fact, without this coverage, hitting your profit targets may become impossible.
  • Where medical fits into liability coverage
    There are two extremely valuable provisions in a solid business insurance policy designed specifically to respond to incidents such as this. The goal of the provisions is twofold:  protect your business from the financial risk of such accidents—legal fees for defense, the potential for large lawsuit awards against you; and try to quickly respond to the pain of the victim in ways that help to avoid lawsuits in the first place.

  • Don’t Let the "Gottas" Determine Your Risk
    As the owner of a small business, you understand better than anyone the meaning of “risk.” The key is to know understand how much risk you can afford, and when or where is the right place to take risk.
  • Don’t Let Your Income Slip When You Do
    Chances are you started your small business with long days and longer nights.  You are fully aware of the truth of the old saying:  'When you are self-employed you work for the toughest boss in the world!"
  • Boom: Understanding Discontinued Operations Coverage
    As a homebuilder, you spent your life making sure the work you did was safe and sufficient. Every year you purchased a commercial general liability (CGL) policy just in case. You made it many years with no claims and want to reward your good work with a much deserved and overdue retirement in where else? Florida.
  • Protecting Your In-Home Business
    Today more than 43 million Americans are operating full- or part-time businesses from the comfort of their homes, and these numbers continue to grow every year. One of the secrets to running a successful home-based business is being able to separate your business activity from your home activity.
  • Landlords, Beware
    Experienced landlords will agree that there is nothing quite as comforting as a good tenant; especially if the tenant spends his own money making improvements to your building during the lease term. 
  • Managing Your Mod
    Employers are told by the states in which they do business how to provide adequate workers compensation insurance for employees. As in other forms of insurance, fair pricing is determined using historical loss data. In the workers comp world, this data is assigned to specific job-types; hence a roofer who hasn’t had a claim in 25 years may still pay a very high rate for his coverage.
  • Insuring the Theft of Your Business Data
    The stories of breached data security have become almost too familiar: An employee takes home a laptop against regulations. A hard drive is sent out for repair, but disappears. A disc with sensitive data is stolen from an office. For business owners and managers, the threat is real, and there is a need to protect against such violations of data security.
  • Triple Net Lease Caveats
    In recent years, more and more building owners are becoming fascinated with the concept of the “triple net lease.” A primary reason for the interest is that the terms of such a lease require the tenant of the building purchase and maintain adequate insurance on the building itself. This is in contrast with traditional lease agreements, which generally state that a tenant is responsible for insuring what’s his and the building owner handles the rest.
Don't Get Robbed Twice!
  • Your business has been burglarized and, you find yourself standing amid broken glass. There’s trashed shelving, broken displays and missing merchandise. While vowing revenge the thought comes to your mind: Will my insurance cover this?

  • You realize your favorite cashier is been stealing from you. Taking $20 here and $50 there for several months. Now your loss totals more than $2,000. You make a note to ask your agent: Will my insurance cover this?

  • You can’t believe it! Although your inventory records say you have 50,000 widgets in stock, there are only 1,000 in the warehouse. What happened to the other widgets? Lost? Stolen? Never delivered? As your heart sinks over the lost sale, you think: Will my insurance cover this?

  • You watch sullenly, held motionless by the gun, as the thief cleans out the cash from your register. As fear mixes with anger, it is doubtful you are asking yourself: Will my insurance cover this?

The quick answers to the above are partially, possibly, unlikely and maybe.

One of the often confusing attributes of crime insurance coverages is that the terms used in the insurance policies reflect legal definitions, not the meanings we assume in everyday conversation. For example, in relating any of the above situations to a friend, you may describe all four as “I was robbed” or “that thief took everything I had!”

Yet, according to an insurance policy, the above incidents are four very different types of claims, and are described by four different, and sometimes mutually exclusive, terms. In order of their appearance, the terms are burglary, employee dishonesty (often called fidelity), disappearance and robbery. All of them, once connected to a dishonest act, are considered a form of theft.

The significance of knowing these terms, and the types of crime each refers, is that you purchase crime insurance to cover each crime or combination. For example, if your crime policy only provides burglary coverage, only the first scenario above would be a covered loss. If your policy only covers robbery, then only the last of the four would be covered.

So, if you want to be sure you have the proper crime insurance, do you have to memorize a batch of legal definitions, or risk buying the wrong coverage for your business?

No. This is where using the services of a Trusted Choice® insurance professional comes in hand. Trusted Choice® agencies who deal with crime insurance are already familiar with the vagaries, and can make sure you get the coverage most needed by your type of business.

And that is where you come in. Sit down with your Trusted Choice® insurance professional and talk about the types of crime losses that are most likely to apply to you, and which will cause the most pain. There are two basic issues to consider.

First, what is it you are afraid will be the focus of the crime? For some businesses, cash is their biggest exposure. For example, the owner of a plant store who also has his or her own nursery may feel the merchandise is easily replaceable at little cost. But if a robber comes in at the end of her ‘Welcome Spring Saturday Sale’ and takes the receipts from their biggest day of the year, they could be financially crippled.

For other businesses, merchandise is the key target. A jewelry store may have little cash on hand and a guard on duty during store hours. Their real exposure may be the risk of someone breaking into the store safe in the middle of the night and making off with a fortune in merchandise.

Second, who is most likely to commit the crime?

For many businesses, the real exposure is not someone outside the business trying to break in, but rather someone inside the business carrying the property out. It will do you no good to put bars in the windows, install a state-of-the-art security system, and then hand the keys to a employee you hired last week and say “be sure to lock up on your way home.” Do you have a bookkeeper, cashier or store clerk who can readily walk out the door with your property?

For other businesses, particularly those with few or no employees, the greatest exposure will clearly come from the outside.

Once you have determined these key coverage issues, your insurance professional will be able to recommend the crime insurance options best applicable to your business. Obviously, the more types of crime you try to cover, the higher the premium.

In making your decision, keep in mind the ultimate cost to your business health if you try to cut coverage too thin. Work with your Trusted Choice® insurance professional to be sure you have the coverage you need to keep your business thriving.

A criminal may steal your stuff. Don’t let poor insurance planning steal your dream.

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127 South Peyton Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: 800.221.7917
Fax: 703.683.7556
Email: Trusted.Choice@iiaba.net