“This is covered on my homeowners insurance, this must also be on my commercial property insurance too, right?”
This is something we hear all the time from commercial insurance policyholders when they are having trouble with their insurance company. While most of the time, insurance policies are more robust than your standard policy, there are still a lot of differences that can change the outcomes of a settlement and how the claims are processed overall. These differences are important to know that you know what to expect when filing a claim and going through the settlement process.
The difference in liability of insurances
A major difference that most commercial policies have is liability insurance. For your home, you might be familiar with this as the insurance that helps cover someone else in the case of an accident on your property. Liability insurance is similar on the commercial side, but it’s far more robust. Liability insurance will cover everything including operations, products, and operations liability. This is extremely important because businesses take on a lot more risk than the average homeowner and thus, need more coverage.
You can receive compensation for lost business income
An item that many people don’t notice in their policies is coverage of lost business income in their policy. In cases where items may become damaged, the damage itself is only part of the problem. You may have increased downtime due to any equipment being damaged or a section of your business being down. Because of this, insurance companies will often cover a part of the income you may have lost. This is something that homeowners insurance will not cover, even if your primary workspace is your home.
Residential is much more standard (cookie-cutter)
One of the nice benefits of commercial insurance is how customizable it is. You can add and remove so many different kinds of coverage that can meet the exact needs of your business. This is because insurance companies understand that there are different tasks for different kinds of businesses, and not all businesses need all coverages. This is quite different from residential insurance which is notoriously “cookie-cutter” because of the insane amount of insurance policies insurance companies have, they keep things simple so it is easy to keep up with the number of claims they might be processing.
Differences in filing the claims of commercial vs homeowners
There are so many differences between commercial and homeowner insurance claims that we could write a book about it. So to summarize it simply, commercial insurance claims are far more complicated. The reason for that is the point we made before this. Because commercial insurance policies are more complex and customizable, it takes a lot more work to make sure things go smoothly. There is more paperwork to fill out, more meetings with the insurance company, more appointments with appraisers, and the list goes on and on. That is why if you have to fill a claim for your commercial business, it is always easier to contact a public adjuster. We have helped thousands of commercial policyholders file their claims, so we know exactly what to look out for and how to avoid the most common problems people encounter.
Because commercial insurance claims tend to be much higher payouts than a homeowner claim, insurance companies REALLY don’t want to pay out that money. A public adjuster will be able to make sure you get a fair settlement on your claim and make sure you get back to business more quickly and in a stable financial position.
