The key to alleviating risk and lowering your business insurance premiums is a strong focus on fleet management coupled with an effective risk management programme.
Poor maintenance and driver fatigue often cause major losses in the commercial transport industry and should be a valuable lesson to all fleet owners that are tempted to take short cuts.
Regardless of what you are selling – a reliable delivery vehicle forms the backbone of the logistics industry, moving your merchandise from suppler to shop to consumer.
Here are ten smart ways to lower your business insurance premiums:
- Fleet management is vital when looking for ways and means to cut back on the cost of your fleet insurance.
- When insurance companies evaluate your business to find out how much you are going to pay on your premiums every month they typically base this on a three-year claims history of the fleet.
- Fleets of 30 vehicles and fewer are usually individually insured; the insurance will then fall under the fleet owner rather than the driver.
- Similarly large fleets are insured as one unit, with claims evaluated according to the overall worth of the fleet.
- Transport is a high risk industry and if operators want to lower their premiums and for some even qualify for insurance they need to lessen their risk, as the lower the risk, the lower the premium.
- Insurance underwriters operate according to well-established criteria and in addition to previous claims histories of individual clients, the operators’ drivers are also evaluated. Some commonly- asked questions are how many traffic violations have the operator’s drivers committed and are they prone to speeding or accidents?
- It is of utmost importance that drivers are trained and up-skilled on a continuous basis to cut back on traffic violations and accidents.
- Commercial vehicles are often a company’s most valuable asset and with this value comes a high risk of liability exposure – this can be in the form of property damage to both the vehicle and the goods it is carrying as well as a high risk of injury to the employees.
- In order to protect your overall investment and lower your business insurance premiums you should have a fleet management programme in place that looks after the maintenance and safety of vehicles.
- The fleet manager will also oversee the driving habits of the drivers – by offering the drivers incentive programmes to drive responsibility and maintain their vehicles and installing electronic fleet management systems to monitor if they are conscientious drivers or not should improve their overall driving capabilities.
If you are looking for smart ways to lower your business insurance premiums; running a legal and responsible fleet will certainly put money back in your pocket.
