Insurance for startups: A guide 📖

Business Insurance, whether it is for a startup, or a large corporation is necessary to protect your employees and your investment. In this article, we are going to cover the different types of business insurance that every startup should know. 

1. Insurance for your organization 🏭

Business insurance helps protect the investment you have made in your startups and mitigate the risks you are facing. Because it would be a shame that one incident brings your company out of business, it is important to look at some of the most common insurance.

• General Liability. Or public liability, this insurance covers the cost of claims made by members of the public for incidents that occur in connection with your business activities and/or with your premises. If you rent an office or a shop or work at specific venues, public liability is a must to have. Depending on the country where you are, public liability might be contractually requested by the landlord of your premises. Check your tenancy agreement
  

• Property damages insurance and business interruption. This insurance protects your assets (IT equipment, furniture, stocks …) against fire, theft, water damages, and other incidents. With the appropriate business interruption cover, it could as well help to financially reinstate your business after a devastating loss. 
  

• Marine Cargo. With cargo insurance, your goods in transit or during transport are covered. If your startup is trading or selling goods, it is important to check who oversees the transport and who is the owner of the goods during this operation. Read more details here.

• Cyber Insurance. Cyber insurance protects your IT network against cyber-attacks and more importantly will allow your company to access a certain number of services such as IT forensics to help you mitigate the consequences of the incident. If your IT network is crucial to your development and you store a certain number of data, cyber insurance is a must to have

• Professional Indemnity Insurance. Professional indemnity insurance covers your professional mistakes arising out of the conduct of your professional business = negligence leading to inadequate advice, breach of confidentiality, infringement of intellectual property rights … Professional indemnity insurance indemnifies the financial compensation of the third party, but it reimburses the defense costs as well necessary to defend your position.
  

• Product Liability Insurance. This insurance provides protection against sums manufacturers, distributors or sellers shall become legally liable to pay because of material damages or bodily injuries caused by their products to third parties. This insurance is not mandatory but will often be required contractually by your distributors. It is particularly true when you work with distributors in the USA or Europe. 
  

• Directors and Officers insurance. Directors’ and officers’ insurance protects the personal liability of the managers and founders of the startup against claims from clients, shareholders, creditors, and many more. See more information here!
  

2. Insurance for your team 🤸

Medical insurance is one of the key elements of every employee benefits program. Numerous market studies show that medical insurance benefits improve the retention rate and the satisfaction index among your employees.

Finding the appropriate medical insurance could be challenging though. Each country has its own health care system and its own private or public medical insurance system. In some countries with a reliable and well-organized public healthcare system, private health insurance might not be as paramount as in some countries that essentially rely on the private medical system. 

If you are located in Hong Kong or Singapore, offering generous medical insurance coverage will certainly be seen as a great benefit as medical care could be expensive. 

Medical insurance programs could be set up in different ways = individual or group cover, international private insurance, or local plan, inpatient and/or outpatients’ benefits, direct billing or not. There are many options in the market. Discuss with your insurance intermediary who will help you design the program appropriate to your needs.

Clema Risk Solutions provide boutique insurance intermediary servicing to startups. With offices in Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong, they offer digital solutions to assist startups in developing insurance programs appropriate for their needs.

And for our mates 😉, Clema is offering:

1) Free consultation to assess current insurance programs or to answer any questions
2) 5% off international medical insurance for businesses or groups of individuals
3) 5 -10% discount for a wide variety of business insurance covers