Home Based Business Insurance

The work-from-home or home-based business culture has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Whether you are working as an entrepreneur or just perusing a side hustle you will need quality home based business insurance coverage to protect your investment.

Over the years, we have spoken with many small business owners who believe that because they run their business from their homes that its contents and products are covered by their homeowner’s insurance policy. Many homeowner insurance policies specifically exclude any business being run out of the home. That can include direct sales companies like Mary Kay or Avon and even childcare. While a homeowner policy will protect the home, it may not insure parts of your business. As a result, you may need additional business insurance.

Your homeowner’s insurance policy may not include coverage for the following business property:

Computers, Printers and other Technology Equipment
Other Physical Professional Equipment like cameras, lighting, file cabinets, etc.
Inventory

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Your homeowner insurance carrier may offer the ability to add a home business endorsement that could offer very limited coverage of the business assets. An example is if you are running a childcare out of the home, you may be limited to taking care of a limited number of children at a time. If a child were to become injured while in your home, you could have limited liability coverage for the incident. For this reason, self-employed professionals should consider home based business insurance to protect their personal and business assets from a potential loss.

Do I Need Home Based Business Insurance Coverage?

If you are operating a home-based business, you need to ask yourself a few questions to determine if additional home-based business insurance is needed, including:

Do you have customers that visit you at your home office?
Does your business require you to have inventory and additional supplies on hand?
Do you have employees or vendors that also come to work for you in your home?
Do you use your computer to store customer or employee information?
Do you process credit cards electronically?
Do you have regular deliveries via carriers like UPS, USPS or FedEx?

If you can answer yes, to one or more of these questions. You could benefit from additional home-based business insurance to cover you from a potential loss. Additional coverage could prevent you from having to close your business in the event of an accident. Without proper coverage, you and your business could be held personally responsible for property damage, lawsuits, injuries, data breach, cyber theft, etc.

How Do I Protect My Home-Based Business?

In home businesses are the fastest growing sector in our economy today. Insurance carriers recognize that fact and have designed small business package policies that can protect your business property and also protect you from lawsuits that may come out of your business operations.

Typical lawsuits are the slip and falls. An example is, a new customer drops by your home to talk about his order, and on the way out your front door he slips and falls and breaks his arm. If he was a visitor to your home and there on a social call, he would be covered by your homeowner’s liability insurance. But he is there on a business matter, therefore, he was a customer of your business, and that medical bill would be the liability of your business and would be covered under your business liability insurance. No business liability insurance then it is covered by you out of your pocket.

If you are running a business out of your home call a small business insurance agent and get the right protection for you and your business. But please do not make the mistake of believing everything that is in your home is covered by your homeowner’s policy. This myth can cost you and your business thousands of dollars if you have an uncovered loss.

Bancorp’s insurance agents are available to provide you with a free review and consultation.  Contact Us – Bancorp Insurance Call 800-452-6826

Disclaimer: This content is provided for general information purposes and is not intended to be used in place of consultation with our agents.