Business property insurance may also include the all-important business-interruption and extra-expense insurance. Business-interruption coverage helps pay ongoing expenses while your business is down after a loss and also helps make up for lost profits until your operation is up and running again. Extra-expense coverage pays the expenses necessary to continue operations until your business recovers – the cost of renting temporary space or equipment after a loss, for example.

Liability coverage helps protect you, the policyholder, from having to pay a sizable amount of money in a lawsuit because of a loss or injury caused by your negligence.

This loss or injury could be damage to someone else's person (a customer in your restaurant slips on a puddle of water on the floor and suffers serious back injury). It could be damage to someone else's property (you send your mobile carpet-cleaning unit out to clean a customer's carpet and while working, your employee accidentally breaks a very expensive antique vase). Or it might be personal-injury damage (your major competitor claims your recent advertisements comparing his dry-cleaning firm with yours slandered his products and services).

Your liability policy can also provide coverages for a range of other liability risks your business may face, from medical payments for injuries suffered by the general public on your premises to fire legal liability (property coverage for fire, smoke, and explosion damage to your building if you lease or rent, if you're found legally liable for the damage).

Note: As with all insurance, of course, your liability coverage protects you only up to the limits listed in your policy. And there are some situations which your general liability policy won't cover at all.

That's where Commercial Umbrella Liability Coverage comes in. If you have a claim that exhausts the limits of your existing property and liability insurance, a commercial umbrella policy extends the limits of - and in some cases, affords broader coverage than - your underlying liability policies.

To help protect your business from a crippling loss, Colton Insurance Associates offers commercial umbrella liability coverage that's designed for a variety of businesses, from contractors to mercantile, from manufacturing to service firms. Your Colton Insurance Account Manager can show you how, at minimal cost, a commercial umbrella policy helps assure that you won't lose the business you've worked so hard to build.

If you're like most business owners, workers' compensation makes up a significant part of your insurance premium. One way to reduce your workers' compensation cost is to reduce your claims by practicing good loss control and emphasizing safety in the workplace. An insurance company with good loss control practice can help you avoid claims, minimize the impact of the claims you do have, and conceivably lower your rates. Colton Insurance Associates represents many of these carriers.

From guidance, evaluation, and problem-solving, loss control experts can help you take a preventive approach, and reduce the number and severity of your workers' compensation claims.

Colton Insurance Associates supplies workers' compensation insurance giving you the opportunity, and subsequent convenience, of having all your business policies written through the same broker.

Whatever the case, insurance for your business autos provides coverage much like your personal auto insurance. You need protection if your business vehicles are damaged in an accident or stolen, or if one of your employees causes an accident, causing your business to face claims from victims injured in the accident.

Again, as with personal auto coverage, collision, comprehensive (or other-than-collision), and liability coverage are the cornerstones of business auto coverage.