We are all aware of how the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a massive effect on the lives of people all around the world. Many businesses moved from brick-and-mortar to digital. As someone who has moved with the times, you’re probably wondering: “does my online business need insurance coverage?”
Times are changing
We have witnessed its broad impact that affects not only the general society, economy, culture, politics but also led to a dramatic loss of human lives worldwide that gives rise to major challenges in public health, food systems, and the work lives of the people.
We suffered enough mainly because we never expected any of this to happen. Even in our wildest dream, we have not anticipated that this one-time event will entirely change our lives. We are now in our second year of going along with the new normal, and we could not still grasp our current situation. The nightmare becomes a reality because we suffered too much in every aspect of our lives.
Last year (2020), when people are required to do everything in the comforts of their home including work and studies, people do not have a choice but to follow. It has continued up to the present and a lot of us right now have lost our jobs, and are forced to close our small businesses because customers are very cautious of going outside resulting in limited to zero customers a day, meaning no sales. It does not make sense if they continued to operate because they will just incur losses daily.
Due to the foreclosure of the business, companies, and business owners have also decided to terminate their employees to cut costs or lessen their manpower. As a result, there has an increased percentage of unemployment in different countries across the world.
Online Businesses
Since many businesses have started to move online platforms, and most of the people are cooped up inside the comforts of their homes, most of them have resorted to doing everything online. Not only in terms of studies, or social interaction but also in the way of making money in a form of online business. This pandemic gives rise to the era of online businesses because of the increasing numbers of people who have dominated every online platform there is. They can reach their target market by posting pictures of their products and services offered.
On the other hand, consumers can also satisfy their needs by just browsing and messaging these sellers. Online business is very convenient these days because, in just one click, we can already buy what we need while in seller’s point of view, it is cost-effective because all they need is their mobile phone and a stable internet connection.
Advantage of Online Businesses
Online business has some advantages in terms of operability because buyer and seller interaction can be done 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is also easier to set up in a way that it can be up and running in a matter of a few days. Online shops can set themselves up compared to loads of work in opening up a physical store. It can also increase our virtual audiences nationwide (or even worldwide) if we can only promote our innovative products with a clean, catchy, and creative marketing strategy, we can automatically reach a much larger sales market than in the traditional retail store.
With that being said, online business is a very profitable venture especially in this time of the pandemic. If we choose to do online business, aside from the need to register our business for permits and legal documents, we need to make sure that it will also be insured. If we insure our physical stores, we also need to get insurance for our online businesses for additional protection.
Amid the pandemic, we had realized the importance of having life insurance. When people are dying because of the COVID-19, the families of the deceased are left burdened. All deaths are so sudden and no one is prepared, even for our government, for it to happen. People are now wary and do not want to repeat the same mistake twice and wait for another unexpected phenomenon to catch us off-guard. We need to be smart and prepared financially, and plan our future accordingly. We, at AIS, can help you with your needs.
Why Insurance Is Needed For Your Online Business
Now the question arises as to why insurance is necessary for your business and how it will help online business owners mitigate the inherent risks of doing business online. Speaking of inherent risk, these are the common problems that might arise when doing online business.
Number one on the list is the breach in our business’s online security like hacking and data phishing. When this happens, the perpetrator can have access to and obtain confidential information such as the payment system and information related to our debit/credit card account numbers. They can also steal the account numbers of the customers which can be used for another illegal purpose.
The second is stealing our intellectual property which is copy-righted. There might be some online businesses that are stealing our photos, posters, captions, or formula without our permission. When this happens, there will be confusion to the customers as to who is the legitimate seller, and worst, they will be able to steal customers from you resulting in declining sales for your business.
The last, and most common, are customer disputes due to dissatisfaction of customers. Most of the time, they make it big and complain a lot about a minimal issue that can be fixed or solved with just a little effort. But some customers are very extra, and even file lawsuits against the business for breach of contract. With all these problems that might arise, our online business needs insurance to protect us from different situations and prevent us from paying costly claims.
Cyber Liability Insurance
Business insurance is essential for its growth and success. Our company wants to give you the best option and the common insurance coverages that might interest you to help you protect your online business. We can find the best Cyber Liability Insurance coverage that helps you respond to a data breach and other cyber events to cover financial losses.
Our cyber policy covers both first-party and third-party coverages. First-party coverages will pay expenses your business directly suffer as a result of the breach such as the expenses of informing your customers about a hacker attack.
Meanwhile, third-party coverages are for claims against your business by other parties or companies that have been affected as a result of your actions or your failure to solve the issue. The coverage of our Cyber Liability insurance is data compromise protection, legal cost protection, forensic and personal services, public relations costs, and identity recovery protection costs of legal defense.
To explain further, data compromise protection is for hiding employee and customer information if your data will be hacked, stolen (physical and electronic), corrupted, or subject to procedural errors or internal fraud.
Risk management costs are paid to PR firms to investigate and respond to the potential impact of the data compromise. Costs of legal defense in an event that the company gets sued due to the breach, and lastly, identity recovery protection to identity fraud victims and restore their credit history and records. This includes other business owners, employees, and family members affected by the event.
Advantage Insurance Solutions can help to protect businesses from cyber attacks, liability to third parties, and also help recover the cost of restoring and recreating data to your system, restoring systems to pre-attack levels, lost business, and unforeseen expenses, public relations services, and to communicate with outside parties concerning a computer attack and your public response.
You see, every kind of business needs cyber liability insurance for the safety of their data. It may be a global company or a small business that uses technology to handle its business and who might face cyber risks. Both are vulnerable to cyber threats and are now becoming complicated as technology becomes even more complex too.
This is why businesses, firms, or organizations need to prepare by getting both cyber liability insurance and also have a working cybersecurity plan to manage and lessen risks. Business owners cannot predict what may happen in the future. It would be excellent if these problems would never occur, but no one can guarantee that.
For that reason alone, it’s best to be assured because cyber liability is a question of “When” and not “If”. The business now is smooth sailing and you don’t encounter any problems but once you do, everything will go down. It will cost you a lot of money and it will be difficult for you to get back up.
Online businesses should be insured as early as possible, and our company will guarantee protection for your business and the people involved. Insurance providers are very different when it comes to structuring a policy that covers you, but our company makes sure to give you a satisfying, affordable, and effective service.
We Can Help You With That!
Contact us today and let our experts help you forge the strongest shield possible to help you protect the things you are working hard to build.