You started a business. You didn't sign up to become an insurance expert too.

Quick answerEvery business is built from the same handful of things worth protecting: what you trade from, what you'd lose if you had to stop, who you could hurt, and what you're trusted with. Here is how the covers on this site map to that.

The building or premises you trade from. If you own the building your business operates out of, it needs building cover in its own right, insured for what it would actually cost to rebuild, not what you paid for it. See Commercial Building Insurance. If you lease your premises, your landlord insures the building. What you insure is what's inside it.

Your contents and stock. Shelving, tools, stock, computers, the coffee machine, whatever you'd have to replace to open again tomorrow. On the business packs we place this is one cover, Contents and Stock: your fitout, contents, equipment, stock and your customers' goods together, with the sum insured set at the full replacement figure of everything on site. It sits under Commercial Property Insurance, and it is usually the first cover any trading business needs, whether you own or lease.

Public liability. If a customer, a delivery driver or a passer-by is injured because of your business, or their property is damaged, this is the cover that responds. Almost any business with customers, visitors, or work carried out on someone else's premises needs it. See Public Liability Insurance.

Professional indemnity. If your business gives advice or provides a service rather than a product, and that advice or service causes someone a financial loss, this is the cover that responds. It protects against the financial loss you caused, not physical injury. See Professional Indemnity Insurance.

Business interruption. If a fire, storm or other insured event stops you trading, this replaces the income you would have earned while you get back on your feet. It only ever responds to physical damage, never to a quiet month. See Business Interruption Insurance.

Management liability. Covers the business and its directors against claims connected to running the business itself: an employment dispute, a regulator inquiry, an allegation against a manager. Every business with employees carries this exposure whether or not it has ever made a claim. On the platform we place through, only two of the nine insurers write it as a section inside the business pack; for most businesses it's arranged as its own policy sitting alongside the pack.

Tax audit cover, which helps pay for professional representation if the ATO reviews you, usually travels with this rather than standing alone: most commonly it turns up as a small amount included automatically with property or contents cover, occasionally as a section of a management liability policy, and rarely bought as a standalone product in its own right. See Management Liability Insurance.

Cyber. Covers the cost of a data breach, ransomware or a scam that gets inside your systems, including the cost of telling customers and getting back online. Small businesses are targeted as often as big ones. They just make the news less. See Cyber Insurance.

Vehicles. A car, van or ute used for work, or a handful of them, needs its own cover the moment it is used for business, separate from a private motor policy. For a few work vehicles that is a commercial motor conversation within the pack. See Motor Fleet Insurance once you are running a genuine fleet, generally 15 or more vehicles, and Truck Insurance for heavy vehicles.

Machinery and equipment. Breakdown of things like compressors, cool rooms, lifts and specialist plant is usually excluded from general property cover and needs its own section. See Equipment Breakdown Insurance and Plant and Equipment Insurance.

Industry-specific packages. Some trades and sectors carry risks a generic pack doesn't anticipate: construction, retail, trades, farm and warehousing. If your business sits in one of these, start there once the basics above are sorted.

Trade credit. If you supply goods or services on account and a customer doesn't pay, trade credit insurance is the product built for that risk, and it matters most to trades, construction and manufacturing businesses. It's a specialist product and not one we place ourselves, so we'll say it for what it is: if trade credit is what your business needs, we'll refer you to a specialist provider rather than pretend it's our expertise.

Workers' compensation, not on this list but not optional either. If you employ anyone, you are required to hold workers' compensation through your state or territory scheme. It sits alongside everything above, not inside it, and it isn't something CIB arranges or chooses on your behalf.

One policy, or several? Most small businesses hold their core covers, property, liability and business interruption, together in what insurers call a business pack: one renewal, one premium, sections you still choose individually. It's usually simpler and cheaper than buying the same covers apart, and it's where most businesses should start. But a pack is a container, not a strategy.

The packs we place do not include cyber as a section, and management liability is only available as a pack section from a couple of the insurers on the platform. Cyber, management liability, and any cover a specific pack's insurer simply doesn't write are exactly when a standalone policy earns its keep. The question isn't pack versus standalone. It's whether every section, wherever it lives, actually matches what your business has to lose.

Not sure which of this applies to you? Try the Insurance Needs Finder, or skip straight to a conversation and we'll work it out on the phone.

Quick answerWe don't sell one packaged product for every business. We take your risk to the insurers who compete for it, tell you plainly what you're paying us to arrange it, and build cover you understand rather than cover you were sold.

Plenty of business insurance is sold the way home insurance is: pick a plan, click buy, hope it fits. That works until it doesn't, and by then it's claim time, not shopping time.

We work the other way round. For most business pack risks, we put your business in front of a panel of insurers who write that cover competitively, not just the first one to say yes, and we'll flag a further specialist option where it's genuinely cheaper without being worse. You get a choice built from real competition, not a single quote dressed up as one.

We also do something few brokerages in Australia do. We show you what we earn on every invoice, and have done since we started in 2010. If you're paying for advice, you're entitled to know what that advice costs. Most of the industry would rather you didn't ask.

Quick answerThe mistakes that cost business owners the most rarely look like mistakes at the time. They look like a box left unticked on a form, a policy renewed without a second look, or a business that grew without anyone updating the insurance to match.

Assuming the pack covers everything. A business pack is a container you fill with the sections you choose. An unticked section isn't a gap the insurer quietly fills in. It's a risk you're carrying yourself, whether or not you know it.

Assuming theft is covered under property or contents cover. On the business pack wordings we place, it is not: theft is its own separate section, chosen and paid for on purpose, and even then it typically only pays in full for forced or violent entry, an armed hold-up, or a short list of other named triggers. A break-in with no forced entry, or stock that simply goes missing, is often outside cover an owner assumed was already there. If theft matters to your business, check it's actually ticked as its own section, not assumed inside the one next to it.

Setting the Contents and Stock sum insured low because it feels expensive. It's the opposite: this section carries the cheapest rate per $100,000 of sum insured in the pack, and stock is insured for what your business paid for it, not what you'd sell it for. Walk the site and price everything you can see at full replacement cost, fitout, contents, electronic equipment, furniture, plant, machinery, stock and customers' goods, and make that total the sum insured. The full walkthrough of why owners get this backwards lives on Retail Insurance.

Answering the subcontractor payments question from memory. It reads like a pricing question and it is not only one. The main reason an insurer asks what you pay subcontractors is to rate the risk of one of them being hurt on your job, because a business that engages contractors instead of employing people pays no workers' compensation for them, so that injury risk transfers across to the liability section of the pack, where it arrives as a personal injury claim against your business.

The common misread is to think the question is about covering damage your subcontractors do to someone else's property. It is not. It is about your own liability when a person engaged to work for you is injured, and on many wordings the declaration is what switches that cover on.

Direct insurer wordings commonly exclude personal injury to subcontractors by endorsement, while the Steadfast badged wordings we place generally cover it where the payments have been disclosed. Declare the real figure, and say so if it changes mid-year. The full picture is in If a subcontractor is hurt on your job, can you be held liable?.

Insuring in the wrong name. The policy needs to name the actual trading entity, the company or the trust, not a director personally and not whoever happened to fill in the form. Get this wrong and a real claim can find a policy that technically doesn't apply to the business that needs it.

Where a trust is involved, know who the legal trustee actually is: it's common for an owner to assume they are the trustee personally when a corporate trustee holds the entity, and the difference decides whose name belongs on the policy. And while you're checking the name, check the ABN is listed too; a policy with no ABN on it is a common gap we find at first review.

Whose name should be on a business insurance policy?

Every entity and person who actually runs or owns part of the business, exactly as the business operates, because the insured name decides who is covered. When a customer was injured during a family-run tourism business's outdoor activity, the insurer questioned whether the operator was even a named insured. CIB reconstructed the policy history from its own records, showed the cover had always been intended to include them, and the insurer granted indemnity with no excess to pay.

The name on a policy is not paperwork. It decides who is actually insured, and getting it wrong can leave the real operator exposed.

A family-run tourism business ran a hands-on outdoor activity for its customers. The family had set the business up years earlier under a structure meant to cover everyone's part in it. When a customer was injured, the insurer questioned whether the person who actually ran the activity was a named insured.

Our account director reconstructed the policy's full history and produced file notes going back years, showing the cover had always been intended to include that operator. On that evidence, the insurer accepted the intent and granted indemnity, with no excess to pay.

This is why continuity and record-keeping are real broker value. A policy that changes hands, or a broker who does not keep the history, cannot make this argument when it counts. The insured name, the entity or trust, and the activities described all have to line up with how the business actually operates, and someone has to be able to prove it years later. What was secured here is indemnity: the policy responding as it should, with no excess to pay, while the underlying claim continues.

Treating renewal as a formality. A business that added a vehicle, hired staff, started selling online, or moved into a bigger space has changed its risk. If nobody told the insurer, the policy is covering the business you had last year, not the one you're running now.

Buying on price alone. The cheapest quote is cheap for a reason, usually a lower limit, a narrower definition, or an exclusion nobody read aloud. Certainty costs a little more than the bare minimum. It's worth it exactly once, on the day you need it.