As you are beginning the life cycle of your startup, you want to be spending as much time as possible on developing strategies for its growth and development opportunities and not worrying about your ever important insurance needs.

Two words to solve this concern…

Insurance broker

Your insurance broker effectively becomes the expert of all your insurance wants and needs. They just aren’t another voice you hear or name on a piece of paper. They are there to get to know your startup “back to front” and want to be there for you whenever you need them.

There will undoubtedly be ongoing questions you will have for your insurance broker throughout your journey. As your startup grows, so will your insurance needs. You need to keep protecting your growing assets appropriately.  Your insurance broker is there to make the complicated seem simple for you and ensure your startup is covered suitably as it should be.

Below is a list of five of the most common and important questions that you should be asking your insurance broker when you first appoint them to your startup:

1) What types of insurance do I need?
As each startup is different to the next, it is important that you find out exactly what insurance types you should have.  Once your insurance broker has developed an understanding of your startup, this is a great question to ask first up.

2) How much should I be covering my startup for?
All startups are of different sizes and it is important to understand how much you should be covering yours for.  You need to obtain an understanding of the overall value of all of your assets and how much insurance cover you need accordingly.

3)  What do all the insurance types mean exactly?
As a startup founder, you are not expected to be an insurance expert. This is when you can rely on your broker.  You should ask your insurance broker to thoroughly explain all the different types of insurance.  What is public liability and how does it affect me? What is professional indemnity insurance? You can never ask enough of these questions.  Knowledge is power, remember? Try and utilise your insurance broker as an educator to you as it will help you develop an understanding of what to do in different situations.

4) How does each element of my startup fit into each insurance category?
Start to work out links between each of your insurance coverage’s with the different components of your startup.  What insurance relates to my staff? What insurance relates to my equipment? What relates to natural disaster?  Drawing charts can be really helpful with this one.

5) What do I do if I have a claim?
The most important question of all. Establishing your communication strategy/action plan with your broker is very important in the instance that you do need to make a claim.  You need to know exactly what the best steps of action are with your broker in these unfortunate situations!

There is no limit on the amount of questions you should be asking your insurance broker.  Having the comfort and peace of mind that your startup is safe will ensure that you are never distracted or worried when making the important decisions for the future of your startup.