ABA Blog

Fire Safety Tips for Your Properties This Christmas

With winter underway and temperatures dropping below freezing in some parts of the country, portable electric and gas heaters become increasingly popular. According to the London Fire Brigade, there were 819 fires across London in the past five years from portable heaters.

How can portable heaters cause fires?

There can be numerous causes for a fire, some of the most common circumstances leading to fires caused by portable heaters are:

• Bedding, blankets or clothing is placed too close to heaters and can ignite

• The heater is left unattended whilst still in use

• The equipment malfunctions or is faulty

• The heater has been placed on an unsafe or uneven surface

How can you prevent a fire?

• Always ensure the heater is well maintained and in good working order

• Place your heater in a secure location with a level surface away from any damp or water

• Keep the heater at least 1m away from any persons to avoid any cloth...

Protect your business against legal expenses

Legal expenses are something even the most careful and stringent business owners are unable to avoid when situation arise that progress to defending or protecting the business from claims, disputes and tribunals.Even you are running your business effectively you may come across a situation where you need legal action, legal defence and/or legal advice.

The cost of Legal Fees can often sky rocket depending on the services and the length of time they are required for. Commercial Legal Expense cover is designed to help provide you with a wide range of covers to help with Tribunal proceeding, disputes and other Legal matters that financial impact your business.

What is covered in my Commercial Legal Expenses Policy?

Most legal expenses policy will typically protect you against:

• Contract Disputes with Suppliers, clients, sale, hire or purchase of goods and services

• Employment Disputes

• Legal Defence, defending the employer, employees, dir...

Directors and Officers Management Liability Insurance

Being a Director, partner or officer in a business is stressful enough as it is without having to worry about the cost of compensation and claims made against you. As a Director, partner or officer you can often be responsible for employees, customers, investors and regulators. It’s vital that you stay protected should an of these individuals wish to make a claim against you for a breach of terms or rights or any other wrongful doing.

What is Directors and Officers Liability Insurance?

Directors and Officers liability insurance is designed to protect directors or officers against any personal claims or proceedings made against them in the workplace.

What does it protect against?

Directors and Officers liability insurance will cover you against other Directors, partners, officers, employees (current and former), investors, customers and regulators.

Each policy can be tailored to fit the customer’s needs but typically a policy will cover yo...

How can your business benefit from a fleet manager, dash cams and telematics?With more and more businesses relying on transport in their daily trade it’s vital to manage your vehicles and drivers to ensure everything runs smoothly.

If your business has a large fleet or relies considerably on vehicles to provide your services you may want to consider adding a fleet manager to your team.

What does a fleet manager do?

A fleet manager is responsible for selecting, sourcing and maintaining vehicles for a business and managing the day to day running of the fleet.

How can a fleet manager benefit my business?

Along with record keeping of all vehicles and drivers in the fleet, a fleet manager will often also ensure all vehicles are road legal and eligible for use and help in the recruiting and training process of new drivers.

Fleet managers can also be a pivotal point of contact for your insurer. Since they are often in contact with drivers and their vehicles on a daily basis they can provide insurer...

Prepare your property for autumn and winter

With autumn and winter on the way it will bring with it the inevitable cold, rain and snow across the country. To protect your investment against the harsh weather and help your tenants by taking these pre-cautionary steps to avoid major damage to your property;

Boiler and Radiators

Essential in most housing and business properties, it’s vital that your boiler and radiators are functioning as normal during the autumn/winter period.

It’s important to check your boiler for any leaks or damage as it’s responsible for providing hot water and heating. It’s usually recommended that you get insurance cover for your boiler to prevent expensive repair bills should anything go wrong. You should also bleed your radiators for any trapped air which can prevent them from heating.

Guttering, Drains, Pipes and Roof

Guttering, drains and pipes can become blocked very easily with leaves, twigs and other debris due to strong winds.  Cleaning your gutters, drains, pip...

One in seven properties in the UK are left unoccupied for more than one month at a time, meaning the incorrect policy could be in place as most insurance policies will not provide cover for properties unoccupied for longer than 30/45 consecutive days, usually based on a residential property and on a commercial property this would be subject to an insurers referral.

What is unoccupied property insurance?

Unoccupied property insurance is designed to protect properties on a partial cover which are Fire, lightning, explosion and earthquake.

We can accommodate the following additional benefits through our specialist panel of insurers, who offer different tiers of cover and these are a few of the benefits:

• Fire, Lightning, Aircraft, Explosion, Storm, Flood, Subsidence, Landslip and Heave

• Property Owner’s Liability £2,000,000 (up to £5,000,000)

• Loss of Metered Water: limit £2,500 anyone claim, maximum £5,000 anyone period of insurance

• Loss or damage caused by emergency services...

What is Motor Fleet insurance?

Similar to regular car insurance motor fleet insurance is designed with business’ in mind. Motor fleet insurance covers multiple vehicles all on the same policy. It can include all vehicles such as cars, vans, HGVs, trailers, mini buses, coaches and more. There are many industries that benefit from Motor Fleet polices including the Haulage, Transport and the Construction industries. This is due to the flexibility of managing the fleet, cover and the premiums offered by insurers. Motor fleet insurance is available in 3 levels of cover including Comprehensive, Third Party and Fire and Theft Third Party Only.

How does Motor Fleet insurance work?

Fleet insurance can be taken out if your business has 2 or more vehicles, the policy can cover any driver or can be fixed to named drivers for certain vehicles. The main advantage of fleet insurance over covering each vehicle individually is having all vehicles under one policy making it easier to keep track of when ren...

What is it?

Professional Indemnity Insurance is cover against claims and law suits made by your customers or clients if you have provided insufficient, advice, services or designs that cause your client/customer to lose money.

Who is it for?

Professional Indemnity Insurance is needed by many professionals and varies from the type of business you are in. If you provide:

• Advice or services including consulting or contracting

• Designs such as architecture, engineering, graphic designing

• Negligence in the work undertaken for your client

• You are freelancer, contractor, self-employed professional offering services that could loose the client money based on your services provided

Is it a legal requirement to have professional indemnity insurance?

No, current laws in the UK do not require you to legally have Professional Indemnity Insurance for your business. It is however recommended that you consider getting cover for your business because if a client or a customer takes legal...

What is it?

Public Liability Insurance is cover for your business against injury or damage to members of the public or their property.

Who is it for?

Designed primarily for businesses that come into contact with the public on a daily basis, Public Liability Insurance is a must for businesses from SME’s to corporate companies. 

Is it a legal requirement to have public liability insurance?

Simply put, no. The current UK laws do not require your business to have Public Liability Insurance however, it is highly recommended that you cover your business against potential law suits from damages to the public as these are usually very costly to settle (on average in the tens of thousands after legal costs).

How much does it typically cost?

Your insurance quote is based on a number of factors such as the nature of your business, the scale, the possible risks/hazards, the location of your business, your annual turnover and other factors that detail the nature of how your business functions.

Our team of...

Can you believe that we are in 2018 already? I mean 2017 has shot by and whilst a lot happened last year, we must learn from some mistakes I’ve seen made by high risk companies.

High risk companies can garner over last years faults and utilise it to impact the business in a positive way for 2018.

Here’s 5 things that I believe will help your construction business this year when it comes to your insurance:

1.      Figures, Figures, Figures

I know talking about numbers is not the most glamorous of subjects, but when speaking with your broker be sure to give an exact breakdown of your turnover and wage roll. Yes, I know it sounds crazy nevertheless there’s still some people with the ‘around £5m turnover’ answer. Oh, does that hurt the ears. The information you provide is what your policy is worth. When there is an unfortunate incident you need to make sure that the insurer will have no qualms in covering the damage. They will look to the information that you and your...