Business Income or Interruption Insurance: Do I have coverage if my business closes due to a covered loss in Florida?

When you are a business owner in Florida, it’s important to look at having all of the needed coverage. You don’t want to run into a situation where you are not covered against something. Whether it’s because of a hurricane, a tropical storm, or some other issue, you want to know that you have coverage against lost income if you have to close because of a covered loss.

What kind of loss could you incur?

You could incur a loss because of having to keep your business closed. Regardless of whether you’re a restaurant, a salon, a store, or anything else, when your business is closed, you can’t make sales. This could have a significant impact on your profits as well as your ability to stay operational. If you don’t have income coming in, you have no means of paying the bills associated with your business.

Knowing about the potential loss means that you need to look at ways to compensate for such a loss when there is an interruption in the way that you operate your business.

How do you get the coverage?

Getting the coverage is relatively easy. You need to talk to an insurance agent that specializes in business insurance. Beyond going with traditional business insurance, you need to look at business income insurance or business interruption insurance. This will provide you with extra coverage so that you can gain some kind of compensation for income lost because of having to close your business when there is some kind of issue going on in your area.

There is going to be specific “covered loss” specifics within your policy. These might have to do with hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters. If your business closed for another reason that is not covered within the “covered loss” aspects of your policy, your claim would be denied.

What else do you need to know?

Every policy is a little bit different, which means you need to read the fine print. You want the “covered loss” to include as much as possible. Otherwise, you run the risk of your claim being denied.

If you have to close your business because of evacuating to another area, you also have to be aware of how insurance can deal with the claim. If you were not on a “required evacuation” order, and you chose to close your business, insurance may not cover the lost income during the times where your business is closed as a result of evacuating early.

The best thing for you to do is talk to an independent insurance agent. Find out how you can protect your business income with various insurance coverage options.