The Best Business Insurance Providers of 2023

The best business insurance gives you peace of mind that, when something goes wrong, you have the coverage and a provider that will support you through the entire process, from filing the claim to getting your funds. To find the best business insurance for small businesses, we researched more than two dozen options, looking specifically at the types of policies they offer, their claims processes and other features.

There’s a wide range of business insurance providers in today’s market, which can make choosing the best one for your business a tough process. When looking for an insurance provider, you should take a number of factors into consideration. Here are some of the main points you should look into.

COMPANY EXPERIENCE

Not all businesses or industries face the same risks, so you’ll want to look for a company that has the background and experience to handle insurance for your type of business. Also look for customer testimonials. If you expect your business to continue growing, consider whether the company offers coverage that can grow with you.

COVERAGE

Many companies sell general liability business insurance, but it can be challenging to determine the type of coverage you’ll need. Consider the risks you face in your business; different types of businesses have different risks. For instance, a medical practice would need more coverage than an arts and crafts supplier.

If you have a high-risk business, seek out insurers that offer excess insurance or umbrella policies to expand your coverage. These will cover you if a claim against you exceeds the amount of your general liability policy. These are a couple of the questions you should ask yourself and/or the insurance provider in your research process:

• Can the insurer provide enough coverage for all of your assets’ liabilities as well as damage?
• Is the provider’s liability insurance adequate for your business’s risks?

If you are a contractor or perform projects for other companies, it’s important to check with your client about insurance. A contract for which you perform work may require a certain amount of insurance coverage or an umbrella policy, or sometimes a company will add you to its general liability policy to be insured on a specific project. Some businesses are required by state law to carry certain types of liability insurance, so check your state’s requirements.

CLAIMS PROCESSING

You want an insurer with a proven record of settling claims quickly and fairly. Check an insurer’s claims process to see if it offers several options, including online tools, to submit and track a claim. The more options for submitting a claim, the better. The insurer’s track record for how quickly it processes claims is also important.

You also may want to make sure the insurance provider lets you file claims 24/7. Should something happen on the weekend or late at night, you don’t want to have to wait to start the claims process.

Read testimonials from people who have been through that insurance company’s claims process. The insurer should have a history of high customer satisfaction. Business liability insurance companies should be responsive and supportive should you ever need to file a claim.

Business liability insurance is a critical policy for most businesses. It protects you from a wide variety of potential issues. Specifically, these policies cover bodily injury to others who come into your business. This could be a customer in your retail store or a client in your office. General liability insurance also protects against damage to the property of anyone who comes into your store, office, plant or any other type of business location. In both of these instances, the business liability insurance can cover any legal or medical costs you incur.

Besides protection against claims from clients, customers, and other visitors to your business, business liability insurance protects against advertising injury. This means claims of false advertising, libel, slander or copyright infringement. For example, if you put out an ad that mentions one of your competitors in a bad light and they sue you with a claim that the ad negatively impacted their business, your insurance can cover the costs of defending yourself.

Whether you win or lose, such lawsuits can be extremely costly and time-consuming, taking your focus away from generating revenue. This can be devastating for a small business, so general liability insurance is extremely important. Small business liability insurance allows you to focus on your business even when you’re facing a claim of damage, injury or negligence.

Another benefit of business liability insurance is protection against damage to property you rent. If equipment or other property is damaged by fire, lightning, or an explosion, your insurance will cover the costs.

There are several other types of liability policies that some businesses may benefit from.

• Professional liability insurance: As we discussed above, this is designed for businesses that provide professional services for clients. Also referred to as E&O insurance, this type of policy covers businesses that are being sued for negligence in the services they provide. Basically, professional liability insurance covers businesses that are sued for making a mistake with a client, whether the claim is founded or unfounded.
• Management liability insurance: This is designed to cover businesses in instances where managers are sued for things like breach of responsibilities or wrongful termination. It includes more specific policies like directors and officers (D&O) liability, fiduciary liability, and employment practices liability.
• Cyber liability insurance: This protects your business from the expenses associated with incidents like computer hacks and data breaches. Research from Chubb shows the importance of cyber liability insurance. According to the Chubb Cyber Index, the number of cyber incidents that have impacted businesses has increased by more than 500% since 2012. Social attacks like phishing scams and blackmail account for 21% of all incidents since 2009. Errors, hacking and malware were the other top causes of cyber incidents over the past 11 years.

When you’re deciding which types of liability insurance you may benefit from, the first thing to consider is your type of business. How large is your organization? What is its legal structure? What industry are you in? Where is your business located? Answering all of these questions will help you determine which liability policies you need to properly protect your business.

You don’t have to figure this all out on your own. Don’t hesitate to talk to various insurance agents to get their take. Give them the details of your business and how it operates, and they will make recommendations based on their industry expertise.

There are various types of small business insurance besides general liability.

Professional Liability

Professional liability, commonly known as errors and omissions (E&O) coverage, insures small businesses for claims of actual or alleged mistakes that cause financial harm to a third party or a failure to provide a service. There are specialized E&O insurance plans for professionals such as architects, attorneys, insurance agents, consultants, accountants and media producers.

Product Liability

Product liability covers a business, such as a product manufacturer, against third-party claims of bodily harm, illness or damage related to the business’s product. This can extend to individual parts or components that your small business manufactures.

Commercial Property

Commercial property insurance covers accidental damage to your small business’s property. This damage could be from things like a fire, storm, burglary or vandalism.

Business Interruption Insurance

Business interruption insurance helps support small businesses with commercial property insurance in the event of halted business operations and/or relocation of a business related to an event like a fire or storm.

Crime and Financial Liability

Crime and financial liability policies cover losses due to theft of business property, which can include stolen money, employee financial fraud, workplace violence, electronic and computer crime, and kidnap, ransom or extortion.

Cyber Insurance

Cyber insurance isn’t usually included in general liability, professional liability or property plans; it is often sold separately to businesses. Cyber insurance can protect against numerous cyberattacks, such as data privacy breaches, cybercrime, malware and ransomware.

The specifics of your general liability insurance coverage will be detailed in your small business’s particular policy, but in general, it covers property damage (including to a third party’s property), bodily injury (such as slip-and-fall incidents on your premises), legal costs, medical expenses, and personal and advertising injuries that would be damaging to a business’s reputation. On that last point, there are also specialized reputation coverage packages that expand protection in this area, with liability limits of up to $5 million.

Excess liability coverage is available in a number of areas. This goes beyond general liability insurance, offering additional protection and raising the coverage limit for certain areas of your policy.

Overall, general liability insurance underwriters look at your business’s size, location, years in operation, scope of operations, and insurance claims history to assess your small business for risk.

As part of our research on the best liability insurance providers, we reached out to small business owners to find out what they look for in policies and providers. The small business owners we heard from said industry-specific coverage options and insurance for cyberattacks and data breaches top their lists of must-haves.

Eunice Sosa is the CEO of Sosa & Arvelo LLC, which provides accounting, tax, business and technology advice. She said that small businesses face more cyberthreats than people might think, and that small companies often don’t realize the amount of data they are storing.

“Cyber insurance is what [businesses] need to be looking for,” Sosa told business.com. She put cyber insurance at the top of her agenda due to her line of work.

Sosa said her company has used or considered Chubb and Travelers because their policies contain cyber coverage, and they offer personal attention for small businesses and “grow with you as well,” which is key for growth-oriented companies seeking flexible policies.

Selmin Karatas, co-founder and CEO of Kazani Beauty, said finding adequate coverage for the right price was her top priority when searching for an insurance provider.

“I wanted to sell at Whole Foods, and you need at least $2 million in coverage there,” Karatas said.

She said this is why she opted for a policy from Great American Alliance Insurance Company, which covered specifics for product manufacturers such as finished product liability, warehouse liability (property damage, personal injury coverage and medical expenses) and onsite liability within the range she needed.

To determine the best business liability and workers’ compensation insurance companies, we started with a list of 18 providers. We then visited each company’s website for some initial research.

Next, we focused on some of the bigger insurance companies and eliminated companies that are just insurance brokers, which work with businesses to find them the best coverage and rates for their needs.

We focused our examination of this narrower pool on several factors:

• Liability insurance options
• Workers’ compensation insurance
• Other insurance options
• How rates are determined
• Coverage amounts
• The claims process
• Better Business Bureau ratings and complaints

Another piece of insurance that all employers need is workers’ compensation. Workers’ comp protects employers against potential lawsuits and provides payouts for injured employees.

Depending on your industry or the number of employees you have, you may be required to have this type of insurance. It could be the difference between an insurance payout for a worker injured on the job and an expensive lawsuit that forces your company into bankruptcy.

Workers’ comp has built-in protections. It can often prevent a third party from suing you in the event of an employee injury. Let’s say, for example, that one of your workers is injured while using a heavy piece of machinery. If that worker sues the machinery company, workers’ comp can protect you from the machinery company suing you in turn. This is a basic example, of course, and legal situations are often more complex. The key takeaway is that workers’ comp can serve not only as a benefit to your employees should they be injured, but also as a safeguard for your business.

Each state has different legal structures for workers’ comp. Some states require you to have it; others let you enroll at your own discretion. The cost structure also varies by state. Depending on your industry and state, you should expect to pay 1% to 4% of your total payroll for workers’ comp insurance.

Despite laws in place around workers’ comp, Insureon found that only 17% of small businesses it surveyed were enrolled in it. If you don’t have workers’ comp or haven’t even thought about it, you should consider it, both to benefit your employees and to protect your business.

With limitations on physical interaction continuing into at least part of 2023, insurance companies will lean heavily on new and advancing digital tools. The accelerated development of digital offerings will be both the central product and methodology for insurance services in 2023. The advancement of digital tools in this space will benefit customers by giving them more control of their coverage options. Businesses will be able to enjoy faster and simpler insurance experiences with potentially lower rates in a period of economic recovery.

Many of these benefits will stem from 2020’s widespread adoption of cloud computing and advanced algorithms. Necessity pushed advanced tools such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality from experimental to essential, and all of these innovations facilitate segmented plans to best suit each purchaser. With an expanded network of customer data available, insurers can design premiums and coverage options with unprecedented customization.

The shift to mobile and remote touchpoints also enables customers to alter plans at their convenience. All of this collected data, alongside the advancements in artificial intelligence, can help resolve cases faster with less risk of fraud.

A potential downside for the 2023 business owner might be the need to add cyber insurance coverage. Cyber insurance is the fastest-growing insurance offering thanks to the increased reliance on data in all industries. Businesses face an increased risk of cyberattacks. With more businesses relying on their digital operations, we at business.com expect more companies to adopt strong cybersecurity policies to provide some protection should they fall victim to a malicious data breach.

Research from insurance provider Chubb and Microsoft details just how big of a problem email cybercrime has become, highlighting the importance of cyber insurance for businesses. In the report, Email: Is the Digital Door Propped Open for Identity Hijackers?, the authors noted that in 2019, the FBI received more than 460,000 complaints of online scams that resulted in losses of more than $3.5 billion to individuals and businesses.

One area of growing concern is called “business email compromise,” which is when criminals hack into a business’s email account, impersonating an owner or executive in an effort to defraud the company or its partners and clients. One such scam resulted in $75 million being redirected into a hacker’s bank account.

While the report notes that multifactor authentication can reduce these crimes, the data also highlights why small businesses, which are the victims in 25% of these scams, should seriously consider purchasing cyber insurance. As these scams become more prevalent and damaging, we expect a growing number of businesses in 2023 to add cyber insurance to their existing policies (such as workers’ compensation, general liability and property insurance).