Insurance. How much do we need?

[Dave A]

Insurance is one of those nescessary evils. In some cases we don't have a choice. For example, vehicle finance generally comes with a mandatory insurance requirement. And sometimes it is driven by the nature of your business.

But once we get past the stuff we have to have, what is the kind of insurance we really should have.

I went to a presentation on various business related insurance products the other day, and was amazed at some of the ingenious schemes out there for us to channel money through the insurance industry. Worst of all, they all sounded so plausible, even needed. Until you scratch a little deeper.

I'd be interested to hear what you insure for, and your views on what you see as critical and non-critical insurance products.

[duncan drennan]

I can't remember exactly where I read it, I think it was on one of the document storage solutions websites, but I found it quite interesting - something to the effect of,

Businesses that lost all their documentation in a fire went out of business within a year

DISCLAIMER: that could be a misquote, but that was the gist of it

Little bit off topic, but document storage, backups etc. are all a form of insurance too

[Dave A]

Businesses that lost all their documentation in a fire went out of business within a year

I remember seeing a similar stat statement that went roughly like this:

Businesses that can't recover their financial data within 24 hours after an IT crash nearly always fail within a year after the crash.

It certainly had me paying attention to backup issues. If I lost my debtors ledger....