Archive for the ‘property owners insurance’ Category

Commercial property owners insurance – loss of rental income

Friday, February 10th, 2012

If you are looking for a commercial property owners insurance quote, you will in the main think about the actual insurance of the structure, the bricks and mortar, the roof and the glass.

However, most policies can extend to include other covers, this includes property owners liability (most policies include as standard), loss of rental income (payable and/or receivable) as an option and contents, also as an option.

Loss of rental income relates to the rent that is payable and/or receivable following an insured peril. It is not loss of rent following a tenant defaulting on their rent, disappearing owing money or requiring eviction, this is legal expenses and we will cover this in a later blog.

When it says insured peril, then this means for example storm, fire, flood etc rendering the building un-inhabitable. You need to make sure that your policy, or quote, includes this cover. We are a business insurance broker and we arrange cover day in day out for commercial, residential and unoccupied properties.

With the insurance market being more competitive than ever before, we are finding an increasing, but still reassuringly low level of customers looking for alternatives. The problem is, that when the go to one of the websites offering to compare business insurance, many of the quotes are lacking in cover, particularly for the loss of rental income. If we quote a renewal at £500 and the customer comes back with an alternative, it invariably is for lesser cover and/or higher excesses. It is difficult to sell to the customer a times that they need the extra covers. All these websites tend to sell on is the bottom line price.

If you need decent cover, please speak to a broker, it is the only way forward in our opinion.

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Commercial property insurance – glass cover

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

If you are a commercial landlord, you will have in place either single or multiple commercial property insurance policies. In the UK, the vast majority of commercial leases lay responsibility upon the tenant to pay for the annual insurance cover for the building.

Usually this is collected along with the monthly rent, effectively in instalments, or once a year. The tenant does not normally arrange the insurance cover, unless there is a full insuring and repairing lease.

Most commercial leases not only make the tenant responsible for the building insurance, but also say that they are responsible for all fixed glass and sanitary ware (ie toilets and sinks).

This is where things get a little bit confusing. The tenant normally has to arrange their own insurance policy to cover this, rather than relying on the main policy (which they pay as well) to include this. This applies in the main to shops, restaurants, take-aways and pubs, that have by their very nature a lot of glass.

You cannot ordinarily purchase a single policy for glass. They are available, but because many of them are for minimum premiums starting at £500, it is not cost effective for most businesses.

The way to obtain this cover is through a normal business insurance package policy. Most insurers will offer these and there will be a limit within the policy for glass cover. If you have a better policy, this cover is simply unlimited. Other insurers do have a sum insured limit of maybe only £2,000 or £3,000. This may seem a lot when you look at it, but broken windows normally incur an emergency call out cost and, with emergency boarding taken into account, this can cost many hundreds of pounds. Over Bank Holiday weekends, this can double. Most police forces in the UK, if called out to a broken window outside of business hours, will simply appoint a local glazier, with or without your approval.

You need to look at your business premises and work out how much it would cost if somewhere to smash all the external glass (it does happen!) and ensure that you have adequate cover in place.

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