I remember back in early 2008 speaking to one of larger business insurance customers. They were a firm of stockbrokers who had grown from a small single office company to one with a dozen offices around the world. It was just a bit of a shooting the breeze about the economy and business in general.

I thought that if anyone knew what the next few years were going to bring. My main contact told me that 2007 and 2008 would just be a bit of a blip on the world economy as it was just a bit of market stabilisation. How wrong they were. As 2008 dragged on everything went a bit pear shaped and my firm of stockbrokers and thousands of other businesses went bust.

It was difficult because everything was being blamed, it appeared, on the financial services sector as a whole. If you dealt with money or a financial service, including business insurance, you were accused of being a shyster and being the proponent of the state of the world economy.

We deal with some of the major commercial insurance companies in the UK and some of them are owned by banks and other financial institutions. We used to use this as a selling point of their financial pedigree and security, then we had to change tune and not mention them at all. We went through difficult times, as an industry, but through it all the personal and business insurance broking industry carried on. We were not touched by the financial problems internally, particularly as the Financial Services Authority had their hands full doing a lot of hindsight regulation of the banks.

Externally we suffered the same as everyone else in that belts were tightened and a lot businesses simply disappeared overnight. Throughout all of the crisis though we continued to bang the drum that, although insurance was an additional business cost, it was an important one because it provided stability in the even of a business suffering a loss. We saw a reduction in the number of policies sold, in particular the commercial property insurance market. Everything simply dried up because finance was not available.

Now, as we near the end of 2011, things are not much better. Who would have thought that when the Northern Rock actually admitted in 2007 that it was running out of cash, that four years down the line we would still have market rumours that many other European banks were still at risk of the same things happening?

There is light at the end of the tunnel, we all know that in 3, 4 or 5 years time things will be better. A bit more financial prudence has entered everyone’s and every businesses thinking. We are more sensible with debt and spending, but this will change. Markets are cyclical, whether you like it or not, you cannot change it. Throughout all of this though, we are still suffering thefts, floods, burst pipes, storm damage and numerous other events to buildings and businesses. This is where a good quality business insurance policy is worth it’s weight in gold. If your business is still finding things tough, please don’t cut down or remove your insurance cover, it is not worth it.