Do you own or are you looking to start a mail order house? If so, it’s very important that you cover yourself as a business owner from potential lawsuits by purchasing business insurance. But even before you purchase insurance, you must first have a solid business plan that outlines your risks as a business owner and how you plan to cover those risks. Not all of your risks as a business owner can be covered simply by purchasing a basic insurance policy. You must first know what your risks are.
To identify the risks of your business you can simply consult with an attorney or even an insurance professional. The risks for a mail order house can be very wide because of the many different exposures involved with your business activities. Before paying costly fees for an attorney’s advice, we can at least help you to identify some of the potential claims that could arise and how your insurance coverage would protect you in the event of a claim. But first, let’s look at some common controls and procedures you can put in place to better protect yourself from a legal and contractual standpoint.
Risk management for a mail order house:
There are a number of risk management controls that a mail order house can put in place:
- Privacy Statement
- Information Security Policy
- Customer Contract Revision Provisions
- Standard Customer Contracts
- Standard Agreements for Vendors
- Recall Plan
- Vendor Certification Process
- Quality Control Program
- Obtaining Customer signatures on each phase of the project.
But just having all these controls in place isn’t enough. Sure they’ll help you from preventing potential claims or lawsuits, but these days you can pretty much be sued by anyone for any reason. Next, we’ll help you to identify some of the potential claims that could arise and how your insurance coverage would protect you in the event of a claim. We’ll first look at the common types of mail order house business insurances. Then, we’ll look at potential claims and how these different business insurances can protect you.
Types of business insurance for a mail order house:
- General Liability Insurance. This insurance covers your business against claims for bodily injury and property damage. When adding property coverage to a General Liability policy, this is often referred to as a Business Owner Policy or BOP insurance. There are many facets to BOP insurance. General Liability protects your small business from injury or damage caused by your employees cause or injury to 3rd parties while on your premises. Often a BOP will include products and completed operations liability insurance which helps to protect from injury or damage done by your products or completed operations once they are out of your control. There are many other coverage’s that can be afforded by having a business owner policy like commercial auto insurance, commercial property insurance and even loss of income insurance.
- Commercial Auto Insurance. As a business owner, you need the same kinds of insurance coverage’s for the car you use in your business as you do for a car used for personal travel — liability, collision and comprehensive, medical payments (known as personal injury protection in some states) and coverage for uninsured motorists. While the major coverage’s are the same, a business auto policy differs from a personal auto policy in many technical respects.