Business protection insurance

Business protection insurance provides cover for the risks you face when you’re self-employed or run a small business. The different types of cover include:

• Professional indemnity insurance to cover a professional person for when a third party seeks compensation for the consequences of poor service or advice
• Employer's liability insurance to cover an employer for claims by employees if, for example, an employee is injured in an accident at work
• Public liability insurance to cover claims for injury or damage if, say, contractors working on someone’s house cause damage to their property
• Product liability insurance, which protects against claims of personal injury or property damage caused by products sold or supplied through the business
• Contractor's liability insurance to cover businesses in the construction industry for any liability arising from errors that they – or anyone they've contracted – have made
• Goods in transit insurance to cover goods against loss or damage while being moved from one place to another
• Business interruption insurance to cover the loss of income suffered if a business has to close, or restrict its activities, because of certain events
• Property owner's liability to cover a property owner for claims made by anyone suffering injury, loss or damage caused by, or linked to, the insured premises
• Commercial legal expenses insurance to cover the legal expenses of court action being pursued or defended by the insured business
• Landlord’s rent guarantee insurance to cover the loss of rental income and in some cases the costs of legal action for rent arrears or possession proceedings
• Tailored cover – additional parts of a policy which are unique to the type of business and the specific nature of the work they do or are tailormade for the individual business itself

Small businesses – including companies, sole traders, partnerships and charities – contact us when they have a complaint about their business protection insurance. This is usually because they’re unhappy with the way their insurer has handled their claim. Or they may feel their insurer declined a claim unfairly because the insurer:

• is questioning whether or when an insured event happened
• has told them their claim isn’t covered by the terms and conditions in the insurance policy, or
• has said they left it too long to notify them about a problem and make an insurance claim

People also bring a complaint to us when:

• they’re unhappy with the amount an insurer has offered to settle the claim
• they believe the insurer has taken too long to deal with their claim, or
• they believe they were mis-sold the policy, either by the insurer or a broker.

If you’re unhappy with your insurer or broker, you should complain to them first so they have a chance to put things right. They need to give you their final response to your complaint within eight weeks.

If you’re unhappy with their response – or if they don’t respond – contact us and let us know. 

Bringing a complaint to us is straightforward and won’t cost you anything. We’ll check your complaint is something we can deal with, and if it is, we’ll investigate.

Find out more about how to complain.

To help us consider a complaint fairly, we’ll ask you to provide some information. We’ll make our decision about what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties. To reach a decision, we’ll consider: 

• the relevant law
• any regulations that applied at the time
• any industry codes of conduct in force at the time
• the terms and conditions of the policy

If your case is about a business interruption insurance policy and was caused or affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, you can find out more about our approach to business interruption insurance complaints.

If we decide you’ve been treated unfairly, or that the financial business has made a mistake, we’ll ask them to put things right. Our general approach is that your insurer should put you back into the position you would have been in if the problem hadn’t happened. We may also ask the business to compensate you for any inconvenience you’ve experienced.

The exact details of how we’ll ask the business to put things right will depend on the nature of the complaint, and how you lost out. We might ask the insurer to pay the claim, or to recalculate the value of the claim.

If we ask a business to add interest to the payment, we’d expect them to apply a suitable rate – typically 8% simple – to cover the days when you were out of pocket.

• Contact us
• Search ombudsman decisions on our main website
• See what types of small businesses we can help
• Insurance for small businesses from the Association of British Insurers’ (ABI)

If you’re a financial business, find out how we deal with complaints about business protection insurance.