Covering all the eventualities... Bespoke insurance policy ‘is best for business’

GETTING the right insurance policy is a key business decision for c-store retailers. Here, Niraj Mamtora, head of partnerships at Forum Insurance, provides some valuable insights.

How important is bespoke business insurance to a successful convenience or forecourt retail store business?

We provide bespoke insurance packages to over 1,000 independent retail outlets across the United Kingdom.

Standard convenience and forecourt packages are exactly that – standard. They don’t cater to you and your businesses needs accordingly.

A bespoke insurance package will protect you and your business exactly how you need it to. More often than not, bespoke cover saves you money.

In our experience, we’ve found that retailers don’t appreciate the benefits of a bespoke insurance package until they need to make a claim.

The last thing you want to hear when you’ve suffered an incident is that your insurance isn’t fit for purpose and you’re left recovering costs yourself. What sort of questions should retailers be asking when considering new insurance coverage?

A strong consideration should be on whether you’ve taken cyber insurance out for your business.

Many retailers don’t think they need cyber insurance but, if you’re using an EPOS, storing customer data, taking electronic payments or have a collection/delivery partner, you’ll find cyber insurance to be perfect for you and your business.

A cyber criminal is far more likely to target 10 small businesses for £10,000 each, rather than go after a single large enterprise for £100,000. Don’t be one of the businesses forking our money to cyber criminals.

What are the most important areas of coverage for a retailer?

When reviewing your insurance, it is important to be aware of the policy wording, policy cover limits and the circumstances for which you’re covered.

If you’re one of the lucky few that has the time to go through the policy wording of different insurers and their products, you’ll quickly see the complexities involved.

Otherwise, I would recommend leaving it to an insurance broker who will understand you and your businesses insurance requirements and protect your livelihood in the best way. What support/services can you offer businesses in addition to insurance coverage?

Being experienced and available to our clients around the clock is what sets us apart from other insurance providers.

We’ve been looking after the convenience and forecourt industry for as long as we have been around, since 1990. With over 96% satisfaction rate with our clients, you can trust that your business is well looked after with us.

We are partnered with a number of companies across the UK to ensure that, when you have a claim, we are the one-stop solution to stop further losses occurring. We manage everything for you until your business is running correctly again. We have a strong motto – ‘Look after our clients and our clients will look after us’ – which aligns clients at the forefront of our goals.

Do you have any examples of claims retailers have suffered?

As part of our unique offerings, we are one of the few insurance providers around that offer in-house claims handling. We won’t throw you to an external claims adjuster and will be with you every step of the way.

The most common claims we see from this industry are:

1. Property damage claims –when a customer comes into your premises and, in their attempts to shoplift, they damage the store on their escape.

2. Product liability claims – this is when you provide products that are defective unintentionally and a customer suffers a loss and there are product recall and legal costs involved.

3. Motor vehicle claims –if your business is making deliveries to customers or another business, your driver could be injured or injure a third party. In these scenarios, it is often the business that suffers a loss.

In all of these scenarios, we have seen that having bespoke coverage and having the correct policy wording on your side have been vital in getting a claim paid by the insurer. Do you have any new product developments or campaigns you would like to highlight?

At Forum Insurance, we are continually keeping up to date with the industry trends and news so that we can best protect our clients.

We are the only proactive insurance broker attending and engaging with a wide variety of industry events for the forecourt and retail sector. We’re hoping to see you all the Scottish Grocer Awards in November!

We have recently won ‘Best Business Insurance Solutions Provider – London’ from the Global Insurance & Risk Management Awards 2022.