A starting company's every forint goes to building – insurance "will come later". The good news: the starting minimum is not expensive; the bad news: without it a single bad day can take everything.
- First circle: what is mandatory or expected – statutory liability cover in certain trades, client requirements, MTPL for vehicles.
- Second circle: operations liability – the number-one "company saver" in nearly every profile.
- Property cover enters when there is something to lose: equipment, stock, office – until then the focus is liability.
The starting minimum
The first question is always: what do the law and the market prescribe? Certain activities (intermediaries, some technical and legal trades, security services etc.) carry statutory or chamber liability requirements – no operation without them. The client side dictates similarly: larger partners and tenders expect specific covers and limits. MTPL for vehicles is self-evident.
This circle must be settled BEFORE launch – quoting and contracting takes days, but at contract signature it is too late to scramble.
The company saver: liability cover
If the budget allows one cover, let it be operations (or, for intellectual trades, professional) liability: damage caused to others is the risk that does not scale with company size – a small firm can cause a large loss. The limit's yardstick is not the company's size but the imaginable damage (per the felelosseg.biz limit article).
The starting package's premium depends on the activity, the limit and the revenue – at the quote stage I specifically look for starter-friendly designs with revenue-based premiums.
The growth schedule
Insurance is not a one-off decision but a schedule: first office/workshop → property cover; first employee → employer's liability and the group idea. For MTPL, the fleet's statutory threshold is five vehicles with the same insurer, under the same contracting vehicle keeper (Gfbt., Section 3). The entry threshold for casco/comprehensive fleets and the discount structure, however, varies by insurer, so there we genuinely won't promise a number. At each milestone a short alignment – and the cover grows with the company, neither lagging nor overshooting.
For a startup, it's worth drawing up this schedule at the outset – so insurance becomes part of growth, not firefighting.
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