All your insurance policies protect your business and personal assets against losses from accidents, negligence, and other catastrophes. Naturally, you want to secure the best property, liability, and vehicle insurance coverage at the very lowest price.

In the course of running and growing your business, though, you do not have a lot of time for comparison shopping and negotiation. Therefore, find a trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind independent insurance agent, and build a strong collaboration with her to save hundreds, maybe thousands on all your business and personal coverage. Pay particular attention to manage your business and personal credit;

Especially if you are a sole proprietor, your insurance company will assess your credit scores as it calculates your premiums. Although your business and personal credit ought to remain strictly separate, in the real world, they don’t. Some of the oldest and most reliable carriers still determine your risk strictly according to your driving record; if you can find one of those at competitive rates, by all means go with it. Otherwise, check your credit scores at least once per year, correcting and boosting them as you can. If you must make strategic choices about where to invest most money and attention, protect your business credit score first.

For planning and forecasting purposes, count insurance costs among your “controllable costs,” because you can and should work with a reliable agent to strike the balance between greatest coverage and lowest cost.