Spreading Awareness of Insurance to Small Businesses

A couple of new studies appear to shed light on the continuing need to communicate the importance of insurance for small business owners.

First, a Nationwide-sponsored survey found that 66 percent of small businesses do not have business interruption insurance (hat tip to Insurance Journal for its report here). This is despite the fact that an estimated 25 percent of businesses do not reopen following a major disaster.

Most small business owners are at risk of disaster, Nationwide noted. Some 75 percent of small businesses do not have a disaster recovery plan in place, even while 52 percent say it would take at least three months to recover from disaster.

Nationwide commissioned the survey from Harris Interactive, which polled 500 U.S. small business owners with fewer than 300 employees from June 8-19, 2015.

In a press release, Mark Pizzi, president and chief operating officer of Nationwide Direct and Member Solutions, said:

Small businesses are least likely to have disaster recovery insurance. And yet they are the ones most affected by a disaster. That’s why it’s essential for small businesses to have a disaster recovery plan.”

Meanwhile, a J.D. Power study found that many small business owners are unaware that insurers even provide commercial insurance.

Less than one-fourth of small business owners said they were aware that nine of the 17 insurance providers included in the study offer insurance for business customers.

Only six insurers had awareness rates above 40 percent for their commercial insurance offerings, and five of these are among the largest personal lines insurers, J.D. Power said.

While advertising is important to spread brand awareness, the study suggested that commercial insurers have better success when they develop awareness through agents/brokers, trade groups and word of mouth from other businesses.

The proportion of customers who considered/shopped an insurer among all potential prospects is 61 percent when awareness comes from an agent/broker or trade group, compared with just 38 percent when awareness is attributed solely to advertising.

Still, the study—now in its third year—found that small business customers are increasingly satisfied with their insurance providers. Overall satisfaction was up 10 points at 793 on a 1,000-point scale in 2015, due primarily to improvements in price and policy offerings.

The 2015 U.S. Small Business Commercial Insurance study is based on 3,292 responses from insurance decision-makers in businesses with 50 or fewer employees that purchase general liability and/or property insurance and was fielded from April through June 2015.

The Insurance Information Institute’s excellent online resource for business insurance is available here.