Business insurance is bought reluctantly, renewed automatically and understood by almost nobody. Which is unfortunate, because in France some of it is legally compulsory, some of it is required by contracts you have already signed, and some of it protects against the risk most likely to actually close your business.
Here is how to sort it.
Legally mandatory
Décennale, for construction trades. Anyone carrying out building work must hold ten-year structural liability cover, in place before the work starts. This is not optional, not negotiable, and working without it is a criminal offence as well as a commercial catastrophe. The obligation covers far more trades than people assume: not just builders, but electricians, plumbers, roofers, and anyone whose work affects the structure or its essential equipment.
Clients are entitled to see the attestation before work begins, and increasingly they ask.
Professional liability, for regulated professions. Compulsory for a defined list including legal, accounting, medical, insurance and property professions, among others. If your activity is regulated, assume it is required and check.
Vehicle insurance. Any vehicle used for the business.
Employer obligations. Not insurance exactly, but mandatory: complementary health cover for employees with at least half the premium paid by the employer, and prévoyance cover for cadres.
Contractually required
Not legally compulsory, but you may already have agreed to it without noticing.
Professional liability. Increasingly demanded by clients, particularly larger ones and public bodies, as a condition of the contract. Many tender processes require an attestation before you can bid at all.
Cover on leased premises. Commercial leases almost always require the tenant to insure.
Check your existing contracts before deciding you do not need something. Discovering an insurance obligation during a claim is a bad moment.
Strongly advisable
Professional liability, even when not required. This covers damage you cause to clients or third parties through your work. Bad advice, a mistake in delivery, damage on a client's premises. For any business that provides services or advice, this is the cover that matters most, because the risk is real and the cost of a claim is unrelated to the size of your business.
Premises and contents. Fire, water damage, theft, broken glass. Straightforward.
Business interruption. The one people skip and later wish they had not. It covers lost income while you cannot trade after an insured event. A fire destroys your equipment, which is covered, but the four months of lost revenue while you rebuild is not, unless you bought this.
Cyber cover. Increasingly relevant. Typically covers incident response, data restoration, notification costs and sometimes business interruption from an attack. Read what is actually included, since the market varies widely and some policies exclude the most common scenarios.
Legal expenses. Cover for disputes with clients, suppliers or employees. Often bundled and usually cheap relative to a single day of legal fees.
Key person cover. If the business cannot operate without one specific individual, which describes most small businesses.
How to buy it without overpaying
Work out what you actually do. Insurers price against declared activity. Declaring too broadly costs money. Declaring too narrowly voids cover for the work you actually did, which is the worse error.
Read the exclusions, not the headline cover. The interesting part of any policy is what it does not cover. Subcontracted work, work abroad, specific activity types, and claims arising from work done before the policy started are common exclusions.
Check the claims basis. Some policies cover claims made during the policy period, others cover events occurring during it. This matters enormously if you change insurer or stop trading, because it determines who pays for a claim that surfaces years after the work.
Check the excess and the limits. A low premium with an excess you could not afford to pay is not protection.
Do not automatically renew. Premiums drift upward and activity changes. Review annually against what the business actually does now.
The declaration duty
You must accurately declare the risk when taking out the policy and tell the insurer about material changes afterwards. New activity, new premises, significantly higher turnover, taking on employees.
Failing to do so can reduce or void a claim. Businesses that grew substantially and never told their insurer are the classic case, and they usually discover the problem at the worst moment.
Diary an annual check: has anything material changed, and does the insurer know.
Getting oriented before you call a broker
Insurance questions are specific to activity and to the wording of individual policies, so this is not an area for confident generalisations from any source, human or otherwise.
What helps is arriving at the conversation knowing what your obligations are, what your contracts already require, and which risks would genuinely stop you trading. A tool scoped to French business questions can help you work that through beforehand. Mirage Cloud includes agents covering French business and legal questions, which is useful for preparing the conversation.
Then talk to a broker who knows your sector, and have them explain the exclusions rather than the brochure.
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