As a small business owner in Virginia, you've likely invested significant time, imagination, and money into getting your enterprise off the ground. Sure, maybe you're not a big company with dozens of employees and stockholders. Maybe, in fact, you're the only employee. But you still have plenty to lose, and after all your efforts, it would be awful to suffer the financial and emotional blow of being sued by a patron or client. This is why liability insurance is so crucial, even for the littlest of businesses.
Here's an example of the smallest of small businesses: one freelance writer. This writer is the sole employee at her business, and she generates income by writing articles that she sells to digital and print publications. She rents a tiny office space where she gets most of her work done. This is far too simple and too small of an enterprise to require liability insurance, right?
Wrong. In fact, even a business this small would benefit from having not one but two types of liability insurance. They are:
- General Liability Insurance - Every small business needs this kind of protection. It covers claims pertaining to bodily injury or property damage. If the freelance writer is interviewing an individual for an article, and that individual comes to her office and is injured, the liability insurance will come into play.
- Professional Liability Insurance - Rather than cover physical harm, this type of insurance protects small business owners from claims concerning their alleged failure to rend or improper rending of professional services. It is not automatically included in general liability insurance, and is also known as Errors and Omissions Insurance. So, if the freelance writer writes an article that is not to the liking of a client, or fails to deliver an article that she promised, and is sued, this insurance will help.
Other types of small business owners that would benefit from liability insurance include: consultants, notaries, cosmetologists, salon or spa owners, insurance agents (yep!), real estate agents, graphic designers, computer repair experts, and the list goes on and on.
Chances are your small business will require a bit more coverage than just the liability described above. Some of the other most common business insurance policies are Business Auto Insurance, Workers' Compensation Insurance, Commercial Liability Umbrella Policies, Employment Practices Liability Insurance, and Equipment Breakdown Coverage.
Call or contact Robins Insurance today to determine which of these types of insurance your small business requires.