What information will I need to give when getting a quote?

Are you a sole trader, a limited company or a partnership?

Sole traders don’t need to be registered with Companies House, but limited companies and partnerships do.

If you’re a sole trader but you’ve chosen a business name, you should use your own name when filling in your details.

If you’re a limited company or partnership, you'll need to know your registered business name as we’ll ask you to search and select it.

Your main business activity means the industry you work in or the main responsibility of your role.

Sometimes your business will offer multiple services, which can be covered at the same time. So, if you work in marketing but you also design gardens from time to time, you can search and select marketing as well as garden design.

Entering this information helps us to understand which covers are most relevant to your business needs.

It’s important to note that your cover is based on your main business activity. This isn’t just a way for insurers or brokers to gauge what cover you need.

Your turnover is the total amount of money your business brings in from sales, before VAT, discounts or anything else is taken off.

We ask for your turnover because it’s a useful way for us to understand how your business operates and the level of risk involved. A higher turnover often means more customers or more valuable assets — which can increase the chances of a claim if something were to go wrong.

Take a tradesperson, for example. A higher turnover usually means more jobs or higher-value work. For professionals, it might mean more transactions, or ones with bigger numbers attached — all of which can raise the risk of a bigger loss.

We don’t need to know an exact figure — just round it to the nearest £50,000

If you want to know how to calculate your turnover, read our business turnover guide.

Doing business in the USA or Canada as a UK-based company opens up the potential for you to need certain covers, including cyber, professional indemnity and directors' and officers' insurance, but also others, too.

Doing business in the USA or Canada can also make some companies harder to insure, or affect the terms insurers are willing to offer.

If more than 25% of your business is in the US, and you need one of the mentioned covers, your premium may be higher. This extra cost extends your coverage to include the US and Canada, which are usually excluded from our policies.

This helps us determine whether you need employers' liability cover or not.

It doesn't matter if you have someone working for you part-time, full-time, temporarily or voluntarily, if you have employees, you're usually legally required to have employers' liability insurance in the UK.

The greater the number of employees you have, the more your premium will be. This is because the risk level increases with each person that's added to the business.

If you already have business insurance and you know when it's up for renewal, you can set the date when your policy will expire within the Superscript quote builder. Before your old policy expires, we'll email you to set up your new policy with us.

This includes your name, email address and phone number (the last bit is optional). We use this information to email you a personal link to your quote. This way, you can revisit it whenever you like.