Unoccupied buildings insurance
Who it’s for
If you own a building, which is either commercial/industrial or residential houses or flats, or a combination of both and it is unoccupied, empty, vacant, unused or untenanted for more than 30 days, you will normally not be covered under a standard property owners insurance policy. Most insurers offer separate cover under an Unoccupied building insurance policy.
The cover is based on the standard commercial building insurance policy, but there are usually cover restrictions, increased excesses and more onerous terms and conditions that apply.
Why it’s important - examples
It is important that your insurers are fully aware of the type of tenant that is in your property. This is one of the main rating factors. You can understand that a shop premises occupied as a fish and chip shop will command a higher premium than a sweet shop. This is because of the increased risk of fire.
If a building is empty, this presents different types of risk. Therefore, if your building is empty, as noted above, you need to have an unoccupied building insurance policy in place. In the event of a loss, the insurers cannot say that they were not told of the unoccupancy, because you have a bespoke policy in place to cover this.
How businessinsure can help
The number of commercial insurance companies that are actively underwriting, or providing cover, for empty buildings is reducing as we progress through 2011.
The recession has meant that there are more an more empty properties, meaning there are more and more claims. Empty buildings are magnets for vandals and also in recent years, people going in to rip out all of the non-ferrous metal pipes and other metal objects, such as radiators. Scrap metal has never been so valuable.
Many of our customers feel that an empty property presents a lower insurance risk. For the commercial property insurance companies, as their balance sheets will show, the opposite is true.
Over time, they have collected and collated statistics which show that they can, and do, lose money as empty buildings suffer more, high value, losses such as fires.
As a business insurance broker, we have access to a number of insurers that are more than happy to provide cover for these types of risks. This is where a broker is ideal, we look for the needle in the haystack for you.
More information
We can arrange quotes for all types of empty buildings, anywhere in the UK. Depending on the insurer, there are restrictions. We can arrange cover for empty pubs and restaurants through specialist markets. Buildings that have been empty for years are OK as well.
If your existing broker or insurer is being a bit tough on you, price and cover wise, give us a call instead.
Most unoccupied building policies restrict cover from the normal range of perils that you would get on a tenanted property.
The usual range of cover is fire, lightning, explosion and aircraft. This is commonly called F.L.E.A. cover. As well as these four covers, you will usually get cover for property owners liability.
But, you sometimes want more cover than this, particularly if you need to prove cover to your bank or mortgage company.
We have agencies with insurers that can provide wider cover, at a higher annual premium. On these policies you can get limited, wider cover which includes storm, flood, malicious damage (vandalism) and theft.
You will never get accidental damage or glass cover, this is where a lot of claims occur. However, we can at least get you more than the very basic cover.
Do not assume that the cover you have got through one the compare business insurance websites is as wide as the cover you would get through a broker. Most only offer FLEA cover and have fairly onerous terms and conditions.
Quoteline: 08456 024 589 (local call rates apply)