Commercial Property
Commercial property insurance protects the buildings, contents, plant, and stock your business depends on. A single fire, flood, or break-in can cost a business more than a year of profit, and business interruption cover makes sure operations keep paying while you rebuild.
We place commercial property cover across multiple insurers, sized to actual rebuild costs and real business-interruption periods, not generic sums that leave you underinsured at claim time.
Cover
What this typically covers
Buildings
If the building burns, floods, or gets broken into, this pays to repair or rebuild it. It covers the fabric of the place, including the wall around the yard and the sign over the door. What you keep inside it is the next clause.
The physical structure (walls, roof, fixtures, signage, boundary walls) against fire, storm, theft, and accidental damage.
Contents & stock
Everything you have put inside the building. Replacement cost means you are paid what it costs to buy the item again now, not what a second-hand valuer would give you for it.
Furniture, equipment, fittings, and trading stock, insured on a replacement-cost basis.
Plant & machinery
The machines you trade with. This one reaches past fire and theft: it can also answer when a machine stops working of its own accord, which is how most of them are lost.
Production and specialist equipment, including breakdown and engineering cover where needed.
Business interruption
The clause people leave off and then regret. While the place is being repaired you still owe rent and salaries and you are earning nothing. This pays the profit you would have made and the bills that carry on regardless. Choose the period honestly: rebuilding almost always takes longer than the number that feels reasonable.
Replaces gross profit and fixed costs during the indemnity period while repairs or relocation happen.
Public & products liability
Someone who does not work for you is hurt, or their property is damaged, and they hold you responsible. A customer who slips in your doorway. Something you sold that failed and caused damage somewhere else.
Injury or damage claims from third parties: customers, visitors, or users of your products.
Money & glass
Cash on the premises or on its way to the bank, and the glass across the front of the shop. They sit together because both are claimed often enough to be priced on their own.
Cash in transit and on premises, plus glass replacement for shopfronts and specialist glazing.
Limits
What this will not cover
Wear, tear, and anything gradual
A roof that has been leaking for two years is a maintenance bill, not a claim. Property cover answers for damage that is sudden and unforeseen, and rust, rot, and slow deterioration are none of those things.
Damage you cause on purpose
No policy covers deliberate damage by the insured. Dishonesty by an employee is a different matter, and it belongs on a fidelity policy rather than this one.
Premises left standing empty
Most wordings cut cover back once a building has been unoccupied beyond a stated number of days. If a site is going quiet, tell us before it does rather than after something happens.
The shortfall when the sum insured is too low
If a building is insured for less than it costs to rebuild, the average condition reduces the payout by the same proportion, and it applies to partial losses too. This is the single most common reason a valid claim pays less than the owner expected, and it is the reason we insist on rebuild costs rather than market value.
Claim
When you claim
Report it the day it happens
The insurer appoints the loss adjuster, not you, and that appointment cannot start until the loss is notified. Cover is disputed over a late notice far more often than over the damage itself.
Leave the loss where it is
Photograph everything, keep the damaged stock and plant, and do not strip the site out before the adjuster has seen it. Where trading has stopped, the interruption claim is proved out of your accounts, so the bookkeeping matters as much as the photographs.
The indemnity period is already running
Business interruption is measured from the loss, not from the day repairs finally start. If the period chosen at inception is shorter than the rebuild, cover stops while the disruption carries on, and that is settled at renewal rather than at the claim.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Rebuild cost, not market value and not what you paid. It includes demolition, professional fees, and building to today's regulations rather than the ones the place was built under. On anything substantial a formal valuation earns its fee back the first time you claim.
It is the longest the interruption cover keeps paying after damage. It has to cover clearing the site, rebuilding, replacing plant at real lead times, and trading back to normal. Most businesses take twelve months by default, and most rebuilds run longer than that.
No. As landlord you insure the building and your own interest in it. The tenant insures their contents and their trade, and the lease should say which of you does what. Where it is silent, the argument happens after the fire.
Tell us before it does. Most wordings restrict cover once a building has been unoccupied beyond a stated period, and paying the premium does not preserve cover that the wording has already cut back.