How to Cut Your Commercial Insurance Costs

If you’re a business owner, you know research, planning, and asking questions are all necessary for you to manage every aspect of your business-from employee schedules to general operating procedures to taxes.

Admittedly, you need to spend your scarce time and resources on activities that are key to your business. So other things necessarily slip.

But one thing that should be-and often isn’t-a top priority is your commercial insurance coverage. You pay high insurance premiums to protect your company from risks.

Why not take the necessary time to ensure that your coverage is working for you? And while you’re at it, look for ways to potentially reduce the cost of commercial insurance premiums.

Here are six ideas that may reduce your commercial insurance costs.

Create and maintain safety routines

Workers compensation insurance is one of the largest commercial insurance products a business has and needs. To keep these costs down-whether by discounts or through being claim-free-you need to be vigilant about eliminating safety hazards. Create a safety plan and maintain it. Involve your employees in the plan, such as by setting up a rotation to inspect business grounds or buildings. When you find something wrong, fix it immediately.

Beef up your training programs

Most insurers will offer sizeable discounts for companies that implement training programs for their workers. This benefits everyone.

Keep your insurance up to date

At least once a year, examine your insurance to ensure that all your needs are being met, but also to be sure you aren’t paying for coverage that is no longer needed. If, for example, you’ve recently outsourced work previously done internally, you may no longer need coverage. Or the coverage should change.

Classify employees properly

If you have employees, you can save by ensuring that your employees are classified correctly. Premiums for workers compensation and liability insurance rates are partially determined by employee classifications. For example, you may have sales representatives who are still classified as production line workers. Talk to your agent to ensure that your classifications are correct and up to date.

Install security features

It’s not as expensive as it used to be to install security, and there are a plethora of options now. Since insurers usually give instant discounts to businesses that have installed security features, you may find that you can pay for part or all of the cost of installing security with the discount.

Talk to your agent about reducing premiums

This may sound obvious, but many people don’t feel comfortable telling their agent they want a better rate and, even worse, they don’t ask if there’s something they can do to reduce premiums. Most agents are happy to help. By talking about it with you, your agent might become aware of some aspect of your business that could result in savings and may also suggest ways to reduce premiums that you hadn’t thought of before.

Make it a point to review your policy at least once annually, and to speak to my office after the review. Remember: It never hurts to ask!