Thursday, June 4, 2009

Business Insurance; A Necessity For Your Company

Owning a business means you must experience a great deal of stresses and strains and undertake tasks that can be both difficult and confusing. One of these tasks is finding and signing up to business insurance packages. Deciphering the terms used in the literature combined with the complexities of the legal situation makes this one of the hardest jobs when running a business. Unfortunately you cannot live without insurance; it is a necessary evil of running a company and fundamental in protecting you assets. Subsequently, due of the importance of your choice of business insurance package, getting the selection wrong has the potential to ruin your company.

Here is a brief article that should help the lay reader gain a better understanding of the world of business insurance. Any business insurance policy will have a generic set of ingredients that ultimately make it sound. A combination of property insurance, liability insurance and compensation insurance will cover your company from most angles. There are additional forms of cover depending upon the operations of your company but making sure you have these three key ingredients included in your policy is the minimum you should be looking for.

Property insurance is especially important if your business operates from a building. This kind of insurance will protect you from loss or damage to any property or the actual location. There are varying degrees of cover, the minimums policies usually purely covering for theft and break-ins while some of the more expensive comprehensive packages cover for fire, floods and other major events. The insurance policy for your business property will normally cover the building whether it is rented, owned or leased.

The liability term in your business insurance package refers to coverage should your company become involved in a legal case. Sometimes the term negligence is used as an interchangeable prefix for liability. Fundamentally, it is vital to protect your company from excessive legal fees should either employees or customers raise a grievance with your operations.

For companies who have a fleet of vehicles it is essential that auto coverage is included in the insurance policy. Like a regular car policy it will protect cars from theft and damage; depending on the options you decide to include it will give your drivers the provision for legal fees should they be involved in an accident.

Of vital importance for many companies is the inclusion of worker compensation provisions in the policy. As injuries at work are in some ways inevitable, it is essential that your company will need protection from compensation and legal bills. In many countries it is in fact law to have this form of cover in your insurance package. It is not just about protecting your employees however; this form of coverage will protect the employer should an employee decide to sue the company directly as a result of an injury suffered at work.

Another form of cover that is increasingly being taken out is protection for employees should the business owner die or suffer serious injury. Ultimately it ensures that the business will be able to continue operating regardless of this event or ensure a handsome compensation payout for the loss of jobs.

While these are purely some of the most popular forms of cover included in business insurance policies they at least give an introduction into how company owners can protect themselves, their employees or their premises from unseen events. Unfortunately while insurance is a necessity, it is the one thing we pay for that we do not want to use.

About the Author

Financial expert Thomas Pretty looks into why business insurance is a vital part of any long term business strategy.

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Monday, June 1, 2009

Business Loans And Business Cash Advances - Avoid Online Forms

Business owners should anticipate that many commercial lenders will provide an online application for commercial loans and business cash programs on their website. It is important that business borrowers understand how to proceed in their search for viable working capital financing and why it is not in their best interest to submit an online application for small business loans.

Commercial borrowers should avoid submittals of application forms for commercial loans until after specific lender interactions. Business owners should especially avoid online applications for business cash advances and business loans, and this commercial funding article will describe how and why to avoid the online application trap involving commercial loans.

Business owners and commercial borrowers will consistently find an almost limitless supply of internet sites for commercial loans. Most business cash advance websites will include some version of an online application. Here is a four-step process for avoiding the unwise use of applications for business loans.

The first step is to avoid the initial temptation to submit a commercial loan application online. It does appear to be convenient for a business borrower to apply for business financing online. Perhaps some business owners are attracted to the anonymous nature of the online business finance application because they have been previously annoyed by sales tactics and evasive answers in loan discussions.

Many commercial lenders have contributed to the pervasiveness of online business finance applications in large part because they are fearful of losing some competitive advantage by not having this capability. However in attempting to match their competition, business lenders and brokers are sacrificing the best interests of their commercial borrower clients by facilitating the online application approach for commercial loans.

The second step is to understand why it is essential to avoid an online business finance application. Submitting a commercial loan application via a website is equivalent to blindly sending a resume to a company seeking employment without any prior discussions or research. What makes an online business loan application even more risky and inadvisable than the anonymous resume example is the usual inclusion of tax identification numbers and other sensitive business data on a commercial funding application document.

There are several key problems associated with an online business finance application. First, there are always potential security breaches during transmission (as well as before and after transmission). Second, there is a significant loss of control by the commercial borrower in the use of their social security number or business tax identification number for checking credit (since many online business finance application processes will result in checking credit before any personal conversations occur). Third, most commercial loans are simply too complex to initiate by an oversimplified automated process. If we can use a brief sports analogy, starting the commercial mortgage loan or business cash advance process with an automated application is tantamount to the kickoff of a football game occurring without any pre-game warmups, coaching pep talks or the traditional coin toss. The easy and convenient approach simply omits too many preliminary and essential steps.

The third step is to replace an online business loan application process with a better approach. The simple and pragmatic solution to the business finance application dilemma is to insist on preliminary personal discussions with an experienced advisor before submitting any form of commercial finance application. A suitable and ethical commercial lender will not ask a commercial borrower to submit any application until the borrower has completed a thorough discussion with the lender confirming that business financing is appropriate for a specific business situation.

Of course it should be anticipated that some commercial lenders and brokers will attempt to minimize the potential problems associated with an online business finance application. Instead of dealing with such a business financing advisor, commercial borrowers should seek out one of the relatively few commercial loan advisors willing to emphasize a conversational and individualized approach to commercial funding for a business owner.

The fourth step is to explore additional resources that will facilitate a better understanding of complex business finance issues. The Working Capital Management Guide and The Commercial Real Estate Financing Guide are two examples of business financing resources that will provide strategies for many problematic circumstances dealing with small business cash management.

About the Author

Steve Bush is a commercial loans and business cash advances expert - learn how to avoid mistakes with small business loans and commercial real estate loans - learn about strategies for business financing at AEX Commercial Financing Group => http://aexllc.com

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