What information will I need to give when getting a quote?

Questions insurers may ask and why

When you're filling out a business insurance quote, you'll be asked a series of questions about you and your business.

Some insurers will ask a lot of questions in order to give you cover recommendations. Others – like us – will only ask a few, able to give guidance about the right covers for your business based on a handful of answers.

Alongside recommendations, these questions also help insurers assess the level of risk in your work.

It's best to have an understanding of what these questions are so you can gather the correct information and answer accurately.

Let's run through some of the details we'll ask you for and why we need them.

What details will we ask you for?

1

Your business type

Are you a sole trader, a limited company or a partnership?

Sole traders don’t need to be registered with Companies House but the latter two business types do.

If you’re a sole trader but you’ve chosen a business name, you should use your own name when filling in your details.

If you’re a limited company or partnership, you'll need to know your registered business name as we’ll ask you to search and select it.

2

Your main business activity

This means the industry you work in or the main responsibility in your role.

You can enter multiple business activities. So, if you work in marketing but you also design gardens from time to time, you can search and select marketing as well as garden design.

Entering this information helps us to understand which covers are most relevant to your business needs.

3

Your estimated turnover

Your turnover is the total amount of money your business receives from sales, without deducting things like VAT or discounts.

We ask this as it's a key performance metric and is a way for us to assess the risk level of your business. Businesses with a higher turnover are often considered more high risk as they will either have a larger client base or more assets, meaning there's a higher chance of a claim or there's more value to be lost.

For instance, a tradesperson with a higher turnover will typically be doing more work/volume of jobs/higher value jobs. Alternatively, a professional who has a higher turnover will have either a higher volume of or higher value transactions, which increases the volume or severity of loss.

We don’t need to know the exact figure – the nearest £50k is great.

If you want to know how to calculate it, read our business turnover guide.

4

If you conduct business in the USA or Canada

This question relates to certain covers such as cyber, professional indemnity and directors' and officers' insurance.

If more than 25% of your business is in the US, and you need one of the mentioned covers, your premium may be higher. This extra cost extends your coverage to include the US and Canada, which are usually excluded from our policies.

5

How many employees you have

This helps us determine whether you need employers' liability cover or not.

It doesn't matter if you have someone working for you part time, full time, temporarily or voluntarily, if you have employees, you're legally required to have employers' liability insurance in the UK.

The greater the number of employees you have, the more your premium will be. This is because the risk level increases with each person that's added to the business.

6

Whether you have business insurance already

If you already have business insurance and you know when it's up for renewal, you can set the date when your policy will expire on our quote builder and we'll email you around that time to set up a new policy with us.

7

Some personal information

This includes your name, email address and phone number (the last bit is optional). We use this information to email you a personal link to your quote so that you can go back to it whenever you like.

This might not be the same for everyone

Some businesses may be asked to call us when filling out their quote.

This isn't cause for alarm, it just means we would rather talk to you in more detail about the nature of your business and its risk so we can give you a more accurate quote.

Read on

For more information about business insurance, have a look at our helpful guides.