Small business owners face enormous risk to branch out on their own. There is a lot of cost to starting your own business. One of the largest costs any small business owner faces is commercial insurance. Commercial Insurance is one area where it is wise to ask for help from a trained professional in order to properly protect your business.  Here are five ways to save when purchasing commercial insurance for your small business.

Partner with an Independent Agent

Partnering with an experienced independent insurance agent, may be one of the best decisions a small business owner makes. This is because an independent insurance agent is not tied to one insurance carrier or a select few carriers. This can save you an immense amount of time because the independent agent can do the shopping for you. They also have insight in to which carriers have a stronger appetite for your industry and can make those few carriers compete for your business. This will ultimately get your business better coverage on general liability insurance for small business at the best value possible.

Talk Extensively with your Independent Agent

Taking additional time to speak with your independent agent is essential to getting the right coverage for you and your business. Insurance agents speak with many customers throughout the day. One customer may be a restaurant owner in a big city who wants to get by with the bare minimum of required coverage. Another business owner may operate a construction business in a small town and they want to secure every coverage possible. No matter what is important to you, it is important to express this to your agent. Also, it is important to talk to them extensively about your daily operations. This way they can help you anticipate what risks you may face that you do not realize.

Make sure you are classified properly

Part of any extensive conversation with an insurance should include a conversation about what exactly is the correct classification code for your business. The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) puts out a list each year of individual classification codes based on industry and business operations. Most years the list includes more than 700 classification codes. Depending upon the information you give your agent, they may or may not classify your business properly. This error almost always gets corrected during an end of term audit, but it could cause a surprise at the end of the term if you owe additional premium. Even if you do not owe additional premium, it means that you have tied up cash flow in additional premium throughout the year. This is money you could have invested in other parts of your business.

Selectively Price Shop-

It is important for you to check around periodically to see that your insurance carrier is competitive with the overall market, but it is not wise to switch carriers frequently based upon a slight decrease in premium. This is because when a claim does occur, the insurance underwriter takes in to consideration how long you have been a customer of their company when they are determining if they are going to raise your premium and by how much. If you have been a client of theirs for multiple years, your agent can use that fact to negotiate for less of an increase.

Implement Safety Programs

Safety programs are one way to get additional credits and discounts when shopping for commercial insurance. If executed correctly, it can limit the frequency and severity of claims your business has. It can also be used by your agent when you have a year in which your business experiences several or one severe claim. If a well-documented safety program is in place, the agent can use it to show you are taking the proper steps to prevent these claims from occurring again in the future.

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