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Business Insurance and Benefit Services of MA employs a wide variety of services to meet the needs of your business.

Commercial Insurance Employee Benefits Business Continuation

Commercial Insurance

General Liability

General Liability can be thought of as the foundation of a company’s insurance coverage. As the name implies, General Liability covers a broad range of risks that a company may face. As such, a CGL (comprehensive general liability) policy is an essential first component when a company begins to look into these issues.

The risks that a CGL will protect a company from are far ranging, from a ‘slip and fall’ bodily injury to protecting against advertising risks and product liability claims. An example of this would be a claim or incident stemming from a personal injury due to advertising potentially deemed as libelous. Product protections can also be found in most CGL policies to protect companies against the failure of their product to perform or in certain cases cause injury to someone. The coverage also protects the insured from costs incurred when incidences arise such as defense and court costs, and provides coverage for damages should liability ultimately fall on the insured.

It is important to note that tailoring coverage to a company’s specific risks becomes crucial when discussing these issues. This is where BIBSMA comes in. If you are ready to discuss the issues specific to your company, be sure to click the contact tab and let us know where we can help you.

Professional Liability/Errors and Omissions

Nobody’s perfect, and in the course of a company’s day to day operations, sometimes mistakes get made. Unfortunately some of those mistakes can have a negative impact on your clients. In the case of a company that provides professional or technical services, this is the coverage that will see to it that you are protected.

Professional Liability insurance protects companies and individuals against loss (damages and defense costs) resulting from acts, errors or omissions in their performance of professional duties. Common claims allege negligence, misrepresentation, design errors, violation of good faith and fair dealing and inaccurate advice. It also covers the gaps that occur when a company believes that just General Liability coverage will get the job done. In situations where a company’s primary business is service based, it’s not even an argument, you need Professional Liability coverage to completely cover a company’s operations.

The key to any type of E&O coverage lies in the details. Tech E&O, Professional Services Coverage, Miscellaneous Professional Liability… Errors and Omissions covers a lot of ground, don’t leave it to chance. The details matter, especially when it comes to protecting your business, talk to us about protecting yours.

Directors & Officers

Directors and Officers coverage protects a company’s directors and officers against exposures associated with management actions and decisions.

Directors and Officers coverage insures against claims stemming from alleged wrongful conduct of a company directors and officers. These types of claims typically won’t be covered by other insurances such as professional or general liability coverage as some may think. Quite often, company owners figure that they will need Director and Officers coverage if they are in control of a publicly held company, or if there are stakeholders such as venture capital funding. This is true, these are situations that would act as a trigger to determine a need for D&O coverage. What some fail to recognize is that just because there may not be external shareholders involved in a company, it would not shield directors and officers from risks involving creditors, customers, competitors, even its own employees.

Workers Compensation

In the most basic sense, Workers Compensation acts as ‘on the job’ disability coverage. This coverage covers a company’s employees against an on the job accident, injury or illness.

Workers Compensation coverage is a state mandated coverage so there is no getting away from it if you have employees on payroll, this can include a company’s owners as well. Fines and penalties for not having it in place can be steep and can result in a ‘stop work’ order from the state (in MA anyway…).

Short story, don’t be the company that doesn’t have it. Protect your employees and yourself. Contact us today to get the coverage you need.

Cyber Coverage

The relevance and need for Cyber coverage has increased drastically over the last decade. With the overwhelming amount of data that passes through the cyber space, the inherent risks of handling customer data have increased exponentially.

Cyber coverage is insurance for liability that arises out of unauthorized use of, or unauthorized access to, electronic data or software within your network or business. The most basic description of the risk would be a data breach. If your company collects, transmits or disseminates sensitive client data such as social security numbers, banking data, medical data, (the list goes on and on) you are responsible to make sure that data is protected. But what happens when the bad guys get into a system and steal that data? Now more than ever companies are taking steps to protect themselves against these risks.

Social networking, media transmissions, new forms of digital communications, it’s the world we live in now. Businesses need to adapt and stay ahead of things in order to protect themselves.

Umbrella Coverage

Umbrella Coverage, also known as excess coverage, provides for an extra fixed dollar amount of coverage that would extend over an established policy, typically a CGL policy.

Employee Benefits

Health Insurance

Health Insurance is the foundation of a comprehensive company benefits plan. It is likely to be one of the first things prospective employees will ask about when discussing compensation, especially if they have families. If you want to be competitive in recruiting talent, especially in an in-demand labor market (such as high tech), strong medical benefits need to be part of the package.

Structuring a medical plan can be a strain if you don’t know the questions to ask. What is the makeup of my employee base? Where are my employees located currently? Where will they be as I begin a hiring pattern or execute expansion plans? These are the types of questions that need to be addressed before you implement a plan design, not after.

Medical insurance is too important not get right the first time and is a major headache to go back and fix. Make sure to get the proper guidance to see to it that your plan is the right fit and is scalable and flexible enough to accommodate future growth.

If your company is reaching the point where the question of ‘do we need to offer medical coverage yet?’ is being asked, the time to look at options is now. Lean on our expertise, contact us today.

Dental & Vision

These coverages will typically go together with medical insurance. Dental is more of a primary benefit than vision coverage, but for the price, vision is often included as part of a package.

As with medical coverage, dental coverage has its own set of issues and questions that need to be addressed. These questions would be similar to what would be asked when developing a program for medical coverage and the same logic and structure can be applied.

Life & Disability

These two coverages typically go hand in hand. They protect two things that are highly valued by employees. Life insurance protects the financial well being of one’s family in the event of an untimely death. Disability protects what may be an employee’s most valuable asset, their ability to earn an income.

Disability insurance plays a key role as a benefit. This is because disability coverage is something most employees do not have unless they are getting it through an employer. Life insurance is always important to employees, simply because it speaks to the well being of loved ones. These coverages can be considered as ancillary since they typically come into play after medical and dental/vision coverages have been put in place. With that said, life and disability coverages are a key part of a well rounded benefits package.

Cafeteria/Section 125

Cafeteria/Section 125 Plans are employee benefits program designed to take advantage of Section 125 of the Internal Revenue Code. A Cafeteria Plan allows employees to pay for certain qualified expenses on a pre-tax basis, thereby reducing their total taxable income.

Eligible expenses that would apply include health care premiums, health care expenses such as medical deductibles and office visit copays, durable equipment one may need to purchase such as crutches or wheelchairs, it can cover a lot of ground. Medical bills add up, so can the outside costs beyond just insurance premiums. A Cafeteria/Section 125 is a way to help your employees mitigate some of these costs by leveraging the tax code.

There are other variations of tax qualified plans that would fall within this scope such as FSA’s, HRA’s and POP plans. It all depends on what an employer is looking to do for their employees and what is a proper fit.

Business Continuation

Key Man Insurance

In the startup space, one could argue that the most important asset a startup has is its team. Even more important than a great idea or concept, key members of a team can represent the backbone of a company, be it from a technical standpoint, a key sales person or the founder that holds the whole thing together. Sometimes a company has those one or two people that without them, the company is going to be in trouble.

Key Man insurance is put in place by a company on such key people. This is done in the form of either life or disability insurance. Key Man Insurance provides coverage for a company against financial hardship in the event of the death or disability of a key person.

A common trigger for Key Man Insurance can take place during a funding phase. Key man coverage can be a sticking point if a VC recognizes certain individuals as key to an organization. Even if that isn’t a trigger, companies need to recognize these risks in protecting themselves.

Buy/Sell Arrangements

A financial pre-nup if you will between the owners of a company. Such an agreement is a legally binding document that lays out the groundwork for the dissolution of an owner’s stake in a company, often to the other owner(s). Most arrangements take into account incidences such as death or disability by using insurance to guarantee that the proceeds will be available and disseminated according to the buy/sell agreement.

In situations such as death or disability, the issues are quite important. If a company owner passed away and left their ownership stake to an estate or next of kin, your next partner could be a spouse or child. In the event of a disability, if an owner simply cannot take on the responsibilities they once did, other partners will be forced exhaust company resources while the disabled owner maintains his or her stake and position.

Buy/Sell agreements can become quite complex and can involve a many moving parts. Get the right advice the first time.