Tag: risk mitigation

6 Ways to Minimise Your Hospitality Risk

February 8, 2018

Allsure Insurance’s Melissa Donaldson will be featured in Insurance Adviser magazine next month for her expertise in hospitality insurance. In the meantime, here’s some tips on how to minimise your hospitality business risk.

There are plenty of measures you can take to help protect the future of their business – here’s 6 you can start with today!

Having your canopies cleaned regularly is not only a great idea, in many cases it’s a condition on your insurance to have a maintenance program.
Take steps to minimise fire risk, such as installing an automatic fire suppression system and portable fire extinguishers, and scheduling regular electrical equipment maintenance and exhaust system inspections for grease build up.
Tea towels have also been known to spontaneously combust, so keep them where no damage will be done.
You also can reduce your risk with good policies and procedures. Keep good documents on cleaning, food supplied and staff training.
Take temperature on new food stock into the business, record it. If you keep food warm, you should keep regular checks on temperature. Know when food went in, and when it should be thrown out.
Make sure all your staff have food handling training. Have regular meetings with your staff about potential areas of risk, and record the date and topic of those meetings.

Have questions, need help or want a quote for your hospitality insurance? We’d be happy to help.

This information doesn’t take your personal or financial situation into account and may only be regarded as general advice. You should speak to us or your insurance broker before taking action. And, of course, always read the fine print (i.e. product disclosure statement) before purchasing any financial product.

Insurance, disasters and embargoes, oh my! Don’t let procrastination put you at risk.

November 23, 2017

What is stopping you? Seems that procrastination plays a big part in not protecting your assets. Let us give you some insights into why you should take action before it’s too late.

What is an insurance embargo?

Insurance companies will often place an embargo on areas if there are events such as a fire, cyclone or flood. It’s basically a restriction the insurer applies where they won’t accept new policies in certain areas/circumstances. It can stop people from purchasing insurance when an event is known to be extremely likely or already having an impact.

What does this mean for you? If you think that the moment you know of a real fire threat coming your way, you can then go and place cover on your home just when you need it, you may find that you cannot!

We’re not able to place most insurance covers in areas that have an embargo on it. Once the threat has passed, the embargo is lifted and we can then look to place cover for you.

Don’t gamble with your risk

Did you know that some policies have time frame exclusions to events like bushfire? So if you’ve just gotten insurance, as we’re heading into summer. However, if there was a fire on your property within three days of binding cover, you may not be insured. Policies can vary, so you do need to read the policy wording.

Did you know that some insurance claims will be investigated for fraud? This is one way to keep things fair for those that have legitimate claims, and can help to keep the costs of insurance down.

Insurance is in place to share the risk with you. It allows you to go about your life and have your assets protected.

Mitigate and manage your insurable risks – and maybe save some money, too!

You can help yourself!

If you take measures to reduce your risk, insurance companies reward you.

Have a monitored alarm system? You could get a discount.
Is your landlord property looked after by a professional? You could save money.
Store your car in a garage and not on the street? Again you could get a discount.
Don’t have any young drivers? Another factor taken into account to lower your costs.

Prevention is better than the cure | Allsure Insurance

October 19, 2017

Risk management AND cheaper insurance premiums?

Did you know that there are a number of ways you can help reduce your risk which can often make your insurance premiums cheaper? Winner!

Risk mitigation examples

Have an alarm on your home? You could get a better discount or rate if it is a monitored alarm. Same with having key locks on your windows and deadlocks on your doors!

Businesses – a holistic approach

Perhaps you have a business, good policies and procedures will help with your insurance rates. Don’t forget about your people risk, too! Having good HR policies and procedures (that are easily accessible and consistently referenced) helps give you a more holistic risk management program.

Simple things like setting up a calendar reminder to review any office risks or hazards is a good way to stay on top of tripping hazards, ergonomics, any frayed wires or electrics and so on.

Hospitality horror stories

Hospitality and restaurant businesses take heed – if you have a deep fryer, you’ll need to have the flues cleaned on a maintenance program, most policies insist on this. Put tea towels away from a heat source, as they can combust and cause fires. Make sure rubbish is cleaned regularly and away from heat.There have been a couple of notable fires in Melbourne this year that may have been caused by some of these issues, one on the infamous Degraves St, and another at China Bar on the corner of Russell and Lonsdale St. The China Bar fire is estimated to have resulted in over $250,000 worth of damage (not to mention the cost to the business in a situation like this, from the disruption and having to close its doors and repair or rebuild the restaurant, pay its people or let them go, the loss of regular customers as they are forced to find new favourite restaurants…)

Creating a program that regularly addresses the common risk culprits, along with robust safety training for your team could make a huge headache turn into a manageable mishap.

Talk to us about how you could prevent or better manage your risks!

This information may be regarded as general advice. That is, your personal objectives, needs or financial situations were not taken into account when preparing this information. Accordingly, you should consider the appropriateness of any general advice we have given you, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs before acting on it. Where the information relates to a particular financial product, you should obtain and consider the relevant product disclosure statement before making any decision to purchase that financial product.

Allsure Insurance’s Hall of Claims

June 21, 2017

Allsure Insurance’s Director Melissa Donaldson has a broad range of insurance experience and expertise, including claims. Today she’s going to share some of the more acCLAIMed (sorry) stories from our business over the years.

Insurance claims – they’re like a train wreck (actually in some instances, they literally ARE a train wreck.) They can be terrible, but they can also be terribly interesting.

I can’t tell you how many times in the insurance business I’ve heard that all we do is make a promise on a page (or a PDF, in this digital age). People pay for that promise, actually hoping they never need to call in the promise. Actually all parties hope they never need to call it in, because that means that nothing terrible has happened. But things can and do happen, as we all know.

But we can also LEARN from stories, so we thought we would share some of ours. Check out six of the stories we still talk about, the nominees for our ‘Hall of Claims’.

The revolving door claim.

A long term client came into our office to insure her brand new car – she was super excited about her purchase. Our dad sorted her out with a full, comprehensive insurance policy. She happily paid her premium, signed her paperwork and left the office.

Ten minutes later… She walks back in. Dad asks “did you forget something?” To which she said “well no, I just crashed my car.”

He then got busy submitting her claim!

Let’s go fishing.

A funny story, well, we all had a giggle anyway. A dear, elderly client of ours was taken out on a bit of a fishing expedition.

It had been a while since he’d gone out on a boat, and the waters weren’t as calm as he had hoped, and unfortunately he was stricken with a decent case of sea sickness…

Whilst releasing the burley, his false teeth let go too!

Lucky for him he had accidental damage cover, and we were able to replace his false teeth.

The time his singing sounded best in the shower.

They make amazing things today! Like, how about a set of superhuman bionic hearing aids, that can be blue toothed to your phone?!

They, as you can imagine, are worth a pretty penny! In fact, at least $10,000 a pair.

They are made so well, you wouldn’t even know they were there…apparently not even when you went to shower.

Top insurance cover meant his hearing aids were replaced, and he can clearly hear his wife nagging him again. 🙂

The claim that never was – sometimes you are actually not insured.

We see it all. It was one of those instances, where you think to yourself, that was a bit strange.

He rushed in, in a little bit of a panic, requesting to insure his contents. He was adamant in needed to be done right away.

A little later we found out a house was burned to the ground not far away…yes you guessed it was that man who set the fire, and then thought he best insure his contents!

Needless to say, he wasn’t insured.

The claims cycle.

We have some very keen cyclists as our clients. Having spent many years supporting and helping with the Tour De Cure, has meant clients with lovely bicycles.

A lot will strap them on the roof on their car when they head out to a training circuit.

One day, our client was coming back after a ride with his wife. He momentarily forgot the bikes were securely strapped to the top of the car, he flicked up the door on his garage, and drove straight in!

He heard the crunch, remembered the bikes, panicked and reversed out, but, unaware the bikes had actually been flicked off, he proceeded to drive over them.

Lucky he had a policy that covered this.

Tie my trampoline down.

This is a classic! It bring together all aspects of your household policy.

It was extremely windy and raining, and the kids got a new trampoline for Christmas.

I know, I know…as you expected, the tramp took off, smashed into the side of the house, broke a window, and sent glass, rain and debris into the lounge room, damaging the couch, carpet and the curtains.

But it wasn’t done! It was picked up again by the wind…then rolled along the corrugated iron roof, not missing a single sheet. Doonkkkkk-doonnkkk-doonkkkk!

Flying off the roof, rolling along the top of their front fence, it sent splintered wood everywhere. Next item up for destruction, the neighbour’s car!

Luckily, it finally came to rest without further damage. Insurance cover was used on contents, home and liability.

Lessons learnt.

Learn from the stories in our ‘Hall of Claims’ and give us a call, we can make sure you have the right insurance cover. Remember, ‘having the right insurance is no accident’.