Get the 8 big risks to company owners on your radar
Are you aware of the 8 big risks to company directors and owners? Have you considered these: disqualification; criminal prosecution; custodial sentences; personal bankruptcy; loss of job; loss of profit; reputational damage; financial hardship; and family impacts?
Any of these could emerge from a situation in which, while acting as a director or manager of a company, you fall foul of one of more than 90 UK regulators1, or are deemed responsible for an accident or incident at work, or are considered to have engaged in some sort of action that infringed an employee’s rights.
Directors and Officers liability, Employment Practices liability and Company legal liability are all aspects of running a business that you should have on your radar and be protecting against.
However, to do this, you need to have access to the right people, at the right time. You need to have a hotline to legal professionals, for example, who can step in when you need advice or help, and do so without racking up a major legal bill, to be paid thereafter.
The fear of what it might cost to access legal professional help can be a barrier, resulting in companies taking the wrong action, and make things worse than they might have been. Acting alone, even if you think you know what the law requires you to do in certain instances, can be unwise.
For this reason, insurance cover can offer protection that can either help stop situations emerging in the first place, by providing the right guidance to steer your decision-making, or that can step in, when it is required, to ensure that any ‘new’ legal situation is handled correctly, from day one.
Legal Expenses cover enables you to explore the type of protection and routes to proceed, and that the cover is focused on advice, which becomes legal representation, if needed. It can then stabilise situations or assist with an end to-end claims service, should a third party have an eligible claim against you. With expert claims handling also on hand, the costs of a claim can often be contained by legal experts.
No business is immune to contract disputes, tax investigations, employment tribunals, data protection enquiry, pension wrangles or intervention involving a regulator. Knowing you can access legal help through your Legal Protection policy, as well as having access to a suite of legal risk management tools and online knowledge hub, can offer peace of mind.
Successful companies may need solid defence mechanisms. Talk to us today about how to put that in place.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regulators_in_the_United_Kingdom