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Most people’s experience with general insurance is limited to Home & Contents, Private Motor and Travel Insurance. If you own a business, you may have come across Public Liability and Business Insurance. With changes to the way we live and work, however, our individual and business risk profiles are constantly evolving. In response, the insurance market offers a range of specialised products designed to protect against the changing nature of risk.
Here are 5 of the lesser-known insurance products and their powerful role in risk management:
The nature of insurance is for use as a shield to defend against risk rather than a tool, like a sword, to pursue or attack. Legal Expenses Insurance, however, breaks this mould and is a product that can be purchased by businesses to pursue (and defend) potential legal disputes and the costs associated with these actions (a typical limit is $100,000).
While many businesses have now returned to the office/workplace, it is expected that the prevalence of remote working will remain substantially higher than pre-COVID levels. Insurance is available for businesses to support employees who become injured while working from home. The policies provide benefit payments (depending on the injury) and can extend to assist with ergonomic injury support, childcare reimbursement, staff replacement and recruitment costs.
Travel Insurance policies will often have some level of cover for kidnap, ransom, and extortion, but a separate and more robust policy can be purchased to protect against evolving global security threats. These policies are provided by insurers as a crisis management solution for organisations and their employees and include a range of risk prevention and consultancy services, including crisis consultants, hostage negotiators, emergency extractions and repatriation consultants, surveillance, security monitoring and awareness training.
A typical home insurance policy purchased directly from an insurer may not provide sufficient cover prestigious homeowners. A more suitable policy may be a prestige home insurance policy designed for homeowners with higher value assets including artworks, antiques, wine and spirits collections, jewellery, and watches. These products can now also include protection from malicious cyber activity. You can learn more about personal cyber benefits and risk mitigation services here.
In the event the Australian Taxation Office or other Government department comes knocking to audit your business’ tax returns, you will need to cover the cost of the accountancy fees which can stack up quickly when audits include multiple years of tax returns. A Tax Audit insurance policy can cover the fees associated with tax audits and other official investigations (i.e. reviews and inquiries) into your liability to pay taxes. Typical limits range from $20,000 - $100,000 but higher limits can be secured.
To find out more about these policies and how they can be customised to meet your specific needs, feel free to reach out at any time.
Head of Client Service – Newcastle/Hunter
dominic.brettell@honan.com.au
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