South Carolina (SC) Business Insurance

Choose The Hartford for Your South Carolina Business Insurance Needs

South Carolina is home to 406,356 small businesses, making up 99.4% of companies in the state. Those small businesses employ 777,012 employees. The U. S. Small Business Administration defines small businesses as those with fewer than 500 employees.¹ Private-sector employment increased 1% during the 12-month period ending in January 2018. Businesses in the Palmetto State have been protecting themselves with small business insurance from The Hartford for hundreds of years. It’s no wonder more than 1 million small business owners trust The Hartford for their business insurance needs. Learn more about South Carolina small business insurance, data breach insurance and the broader category of business insurance.

Types of South Carolina Business Insurance Offered

South Carolina Business Owner’s Policy

For South Carolina businesses a Business Owner’s Policy, which is also known as a BOP, combines business property insurance and business liability insurance into a single policy. BOP coverage helps cover your South Carolina business from claims resulting from things like fire, theft, or other covered disasters. BOP insurance also helps protect your business from claims against your business for things like bodily injury, personal and advertising injury, and property damage that can arise from your daily business operations.

Consider a Business Owner’s Policy for your South Carolina business if:

Your company has a physical location – either at your home, a rented or owned office space, a storefront or other business premises.
Your business in South Carolina has the potential for someone to sue you. For example, could a customer get injured at your workplace and sue you?
Your business has physical and/or digital property that can be stolen or damaged, including inventory, furniture, hardware, software, customer data or other private information.

South Carolina Business Income Insurance

South Carolina business income insurance coverage helps your South Carolina small business replace lost income when you’re unable to operate due to a covered loss, including damage from a fire, theft, or wind. Business income coverage is included in a Business Owner’s Policy from The Hartford. You can easily increase coverage to meet specific risks to your business by selecting from a variety of additional coverages and endorsements that can be added to your existing business policy.

For example, if your business in South Carolina is unable to operate and generate revenue due to a break-in at your office, business income coverage can help you cover your costs until you get your business back up and running again. This way you’ll have help meeting your expenses such as monthly rent, other bills and payroll while your business property is being replaced or repaired.

Many businesses in South Carolina can benefit from business income coverage. For example, companies that may benefit from this insurance coverage include:

Retail stores and shops with storefronts that require online and physical locations to display goods for customers to purchase.
Service businesses, like car repair shops or nail salons that depend on a physical location, tools and equipment at their workplace to serve customers.
Software companies that rely on physical property like computers and office space, as well as digital property like cloud storage for server data to operate their businesses.

South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Insurance

South Carolina workers’ compensation insurance (also known as workman’s compensation insurance) provides benefits to employees for injuries or illnesses that happen as a result of the work they do. These benefits include medical care, wage replacement for lost work time, and more. Workmans’ compensation insurance can also provide compensation to a deceased worker’s family. If a family of an employee decides to sue your South Carolina business, workers’ compensation insurance may even help cover the related legal fees.

Workers’ compensation insurance can help protect your South Carolina business and employees in events such as these for example:

An employee slips on a spill in the hallway, injures himself and requires an emergency room visit and weeks to recover. He returns to work without the full ability to perform his current job.
An employee injures her neck lifting a box of office supplies and requires a visit to her doctor, topical medication, and three weeks of physical therapy.
An employee returning to the office after meeting a client across town is injured in a serious car accident and requires hospitalization.

Workers’ compensation insurance from The Hartford helps cover the cost of medical expenses required to treat work-related injuries and illnesses, such as the ones listed above. Workers’ compensation can also help employees in South Carolina replace their income while they take time off to recover from an injury or illness.

South Carolina Data Breach Insurance

Cyber liability insurance and Data Breach Insurance from The Hartford help cover the costs of a security breach for things like identify protection solutions, public relations, legal fees, liability, and more for your South Carolina business. Having data breach coverage in place before a data security breach is essential because immediate action is necessary to help mitigate further losses and restore the public’s confidence in your business if your business is victimized by a cyber-attack. A Hartford representative can help you find the best data breach or cybersecurity insurance coverage for your South Carolina business.

To reduce the risk of litigation and other penalties when a data breach, theft, or data loss takes place, cyber liability insurance policy or data breach insurance policy can provide access to professionals who can help your South Carolina business comply with all laws and regulations that are applicable to your situation. Companies must respond quickly to minimize the impact of a security breach incident to their customers, employees, and business. The company’s reputation is immediately at risk, and there are legal requirements that must be addressed quickly by companies that experience a data breach. If these requirements are not met, these companies could face steep penalties or even lawsuits.

Consider data breach insurance if:

Your South Carolina business requires employees to save data on a network. This may be part of your day-to-day business operations, but it can also put your company at risk to data security breaches and theft.
Your South Carolina business stores private information about customers, employees, or patients that can be a targeted by hackers. This private data may include credit card numbers, bank information, Social Security numbers, and more.

South Carolina Minimum Business Insurance Requirements

In South Carolina, any employer who regularly employs four or more workers full- or part-time is required to have workers’ compensation insurance. There are some exceptions. Some of these exceptions include: agricultural employees, railroads and railway express companies and their employees, and employers who had a total annual payroll during the previous year of less than $3,000, regardless of the number of workers employed during that period.² Learn more about the South Carolina Workers’ Compensation Commission.

Additional South Carolina Business Insurance Links

Get a quote on Small Business Insurance for your business today.

¹ https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-Business-Profiles-SC.pdf

² https://wcc.sc.gov/