Bollington has been insuring motor traders for over 45 years now, but it’s not just about protecting vehicles or your premises – there’s additional help for the other requirements of your business, too.
In addition to road risks insurance and traders combined insurance, Bollington offers a range of services to make running your motor trade business easier and potentially save you money in the long-run.
Here are some of the optional covers and services we have available, and why you might consider taking advantage of them – starting with covers that road risks only clients might take out, moving onto traders combined and larger businesses.
Additional covers for motor trade road risks clients
Motor legal protection
With Bollington’s motor legal protection policies, we can help to recover the payments that are not covered within your motor trade policy when an accident occurs.
Our motor legal protection policies provide legal assistance – through an appointed solicitor – to help you recover losses and expenses outside of your vehicle policy, including:
- Car hire
- Travel expenses
- Loss of earnings
- Clothing
- Protection of your insurance policy excess
- Other legitimate expenses
Motor legal protection is very affordable, starting at just £35 for £100,000 worth of cover, and provides peace of mind that legal disputes and challenges can be tended to by an experienced solicitor, helping to take the stress away following an accident.
Liability insurance
Employers’ liability and public liability insurance are often included as part of a motor trade combined insurance policy, but they can also be added to a road risks only policy for a small additional cost where required.
Employers’ liability insurance is a legal requirement for almost all businesses with employees. It will help to protect you against claims made by employees who suffer illness or injury as a result of their work, covering the cost of compensation whether caused on-site or off-site. Bollington’s policies provide up to £10m of cover should the worst happen.
Public and products liability insurance can cover your business against legal costs and compensation payments arising from injuries to members of the public – or damage to their property – caused by yourself or your employees. This includes clients and contractors as well as the general public.
Covers include defective workmanship and work away from premises (e.g. mobile mechanics), with up to £5m of cover.
Our liability policies start from less than £200 a year including IPT – a small price to pay for the levels of cover on offer.
MID updates
Bollington offers a service to update the Motor Insurance Database (MID) with vehicles you buy and sell as part of the motor trade, adding or removing them as required.
MID updates are usually possible online via your insurer, but for a small fee of £30 per year, you can call us to register your vehicles on the MID, too. This makes sure that any vehicles you have on the road are added to (or removed from) the database at the earliest opportunity, ensuring you remain compliant with the law.
Additional covers for motor trade combined and larger motor trade businesses
Engineering inspection policy
Bollington can arrange an annual inspection policy to give you easy access to engineers who are qualified to inspect your machinery and equipment and certify its safety. This will help you meet the legal requirements under health and safety at work legislation, and can help you to defend any employers’ liability or public liability claims if an allegation is made against your business.
Our range of services includes:
- Lift and handling equipment
- Pressure plant
- Local exhaust ventilation equipment
- General work equipment
- Electrical inspection and testing – Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE) Regulations
- PAS 43
- Other inspections available on request
Suitable for all motor trade businesses, premiums start at just £185+VAT. So, whether you have a complex or straightforward inspection requirement, Bollington can arrange your inspections quickly and without fuss.
Excess protection
Excess protection has become a popular additional cover, particularly where a high excess has been taken to keep the cost of an insurance policy down.
With Excess Protection you still pay the excess on the claim but are then reimbursed for this amount (up to your chosen annual limit) following a successful claim.
Excess Protection offers you additional peace of mind that your finances will not be depleted when an insurer pays out on your claim – and with premiums starting at around £55+IPT, it’s a cost-effective way of offering additional insurance cover for your business.
Commercial legal expenses insurance
With the hourly rate of an experienced solicitor something in the region of £220 per hour plus VAT, it’s no surprise that legal costs can quickly mount up.
Buying a simple legal expenses policy can protect your business from the cost of obtaining legal advice and/or the cost of bringing or defending a court case – though this cover is not designed to pay actual damages resulting from court action.
Commercial legal expenses insurance covers legal and professional fees, costs and expenses of legal proceedings in respect of:
- Disputes with landlords
- Landlords
- Contract disputes
- Debt recovery
- Jury service and court attendance
- Protection of licences
- Tax, VAT, PAYE and NIC investigations
While some motor trade combined policies include legal expenses cover, not all the covers listed above will be included. We are happy to discuss your requirements with you. We believe this cover is worth considering with legal costs and man hours on the rise – when cover starts from £56+IPT, this is a relatively inexpensive way of looking after your business compared with the potentially huge costs of defending or bringing a court case yourself.
Management liability policy
If you are a director or senior manager of a motor trade company, you have a legal and moral obligation to run your company responsibly. Employees, customers, fellow directors and shareholders could all potentially hold you to account and accuse you of wrongdoing, and your business could be investigated without notice by industry regulators.
If any of this happens, directors or senior managers could be held personally liable, putting your personal assets (including your home or vehicles) at risk.
Management Liability cover is available to limited companies and sole traders – including partnerships – and can cover legal costs, awards and settlements for civil or criminal law suits made against you as an individual (though this does not apply if it is deemed uninsurable under the applicable law of the claim).
Management Liability insurance provides extremely valuable protection to senior management and directors, with options for wider cover – just speak to our team for details.
With cover starting at £2.88+IPT per week, this is well worth considering as part of your insurance portfolio.
Bollington are here to help
Should you have any queries about which covers are most suitable, we’re very happy to talk to you and discuss the benefits of any of our additional products, and obviously to provide a no-obligation quote for any services that may be of interest to you.
We’re here to make sure that you can run your business with as many risks as possible accounted for, while ensuring you are comfortable with the costs of covering your business effectively.
To discuss adding additional cover to an existing policy – or simply to discuss your existing cover – please call us on 01625 854458 for road risks only policies or 01625 854443 for traders combined policies.
