We live in a cynical old world these days, where people are all too often prepared to profit from an accident. You need only take a look at how companies encourage people to make personal injury claims for almost anything, to realise that the single biggest risk a business can take is to not be covered with a suitable public liability insurance policy. If your company doesn’t inadvertently cause a trip/slip/fall accident, then there are plenty of people out there who are more than capable of making sure that it does. With this in mind, it is important that your company gets it right with public liability insurance.
As well as protecting yourself and your company against any injury that may occur as a result of your business activities, it is also essential that a public liability insurance policy provides you with cover against any accidental damage that may be caused by your business. Again, and unfortunately, it pays to be cynical when it comes to ensuring that you are adequately covered.
Everyone has heard about the tradesman that gets blamed for a spillage on a carpet that has been there since long before that tradesman even entered the customer’s house, let alone laid down several sheets to ensure that nothing got spilled on said carpet. A single public liability insurance policy should provide cover against both accidental damage and accidental injury.
As well as protecting you and your business against false claims, it is also necessary to protect your business against the damage and injury that, unfortunately, is sometimes the fault of your business. It is not very realistic to run a business on hope, and to think that twenty years or more will pass without one single accidental damage occurrence, or without one person accidentally being injured, is to confuse optimism with stupidity.
In some places, it is illegal to run a business without public liability insurance, and you have to ask yourself why public liability insurance is not a worldwide legal requirement. Given the fact that the state often has to foot the bill when uninsured companies cannot pay for the injury they cause someone, and given the fact that sometimes people have their entire homes razed by cowboys who don’t even know what public liability insurance is, there exists no reason for the general public to be made vulnerable by businesses who go without public liability insurance. Make sure you are not one of the unethical businesses out there, putting the public at risk by neglecting your responsibility to get appropriate cover.
