Business personal property is the line on your policy covering everything you own that is not the building: stock, equipment, furniture, computers, tools kept on site. It is also the limit most often set once, at the beginning, and never looked at again.
You picked a figure when the business was smaller. Since then you have added a second machine, filled a stockroom, replaced the computers, and taken on a delivery of inventory that has not sold yet. None of that prompted a phone call, because no single week felt like a change. Then a fire takes the lot and the limit is what it was three years ago.
Not what you paid, and not what it is worth second hand. If the policy settles at replacement cost, the limit still has to be high enough to actually replace things at current prices, and prices have moved. If the policy settles at actual cash value, the payout is depreciated and you fund the difference yourself. Check which one you have — it is on the declarations page and it changes the answer entirely.
A standard limit covers property at the described premises. Things elsewhere often are not fully covered: stock in a rented storage unit, a laptop in a car, equipment at a customer site, goods in transit between locations. There are extensions for all of it, but they have their own smaller limits and you have to ask.
If you hold far more inventory in one season than another, an average limit is wrong twice a year. Peak season is exactly when a loss hurts most. Tell us the shape of your year and it can be handled properly rather than by picking a number in the middle.
Improvements and betterments — the fit-out fixed to the building — sit under their own separate limit, not this one. And money and securities are treated separately again, with limits of their own. Assuming contents covers all three is one of the more common ways businesses discover a shortfall.
Walk the premises and add it up as though you were replacing it tomorrow, at today's prices, all at once. Most people are surprised. If the total is well past your limit, that is the conversation to have now rather than during a claim.
See our coverages page, and send the declarations page if you would like us to read the limits back to you.
Walk the premises, add it up at today's replacement prices, and send us the total. If it is past your limit we will fix it before you need it.
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