what business code do I provide to my insurer

SBI code from the Business Register, not your own assessment

The industry code you provide is the SBI code registered with your company in the Business Register. SBI stands for Standaard Bedrijfsindeling, and this code is not determined by yourself based on what you think fits best — it is fixed in your company's registration with the Chamber of Commerce. An insurer asks for this because the industry code says something about the risk profile: a construction company has different risks than a consulting firm, and the premium and terms are based partly on this.

If your company has multiple activities, there are often also multiple SBI codes registered: a primary activity and one or more secondary activities. In that case, provide the code that covers your actual primary activity, so the activity from which the largest share of turnover comes. If you are uncertain whether the registered code still matches what the company now does, that is something to clarify with the Business Register first before you pass it on to the insurer — an insurer rarely asks only for the industry code; often a question about the financial health of the companyfollows in the same list, and these questions are separate from each other but come from the same type of file. If you notice that a bank in a similar list asks different questions about similar subjects, that is due to the supervisory framework under which that institution falls, not an error in your answer — see why bank and insurer ask different questions.

Where this derives from: Business Register Act 2007

The SBI code is one of the data recorded and maintained for every company under the Business Register Act 2007. This act regulates which data about a company is registered and maintained, and the industry code is one of them. Because it is registered data and not your own assessment, the extract from the Business Register is the source the insurer relies on and what you yourself can fall back on if you are unsure which code is correct.