Commercial Combined Insurance

A package policy is a fixed product with set sections and limits that you fit yourself into, rated from a table. A combined policy is assembled around the business and usually rated individually by an underwriter. That matters when the trade, the values or the number of sites fall outside what a package will accept.

Not one that anyone publishes. We looked for a definition or threshold from the Chartered Insurance Institute, BIBA and the ABI and found none, and the figures quoted on broker websites are assertions that disagree with each other. Judge a quote on the sections and limits it contains rather than on whether it carries the label.

It is the condition linking business interruption to the property section. Most wordings require material damage insurance to be in force and, under many of them, the property insurer to have paid the claim or admitted liability before the interruption section responds. Wordings do differ on this, so it is worth reading yours.

Usually yes, where the wording requires payment or admission. The interruption section is conditional on the property claim, so if that fails there is nothing for it to attach to. The common exception is a loss falling below the property excess, which better wordings expressly carve out.

Not under a damage-based policy. In 2024 the Court of Appeal held that a restaurant’s pandemic closure losses were not covered because the clause required physical damage as defined and none had occurred. Non-damage triggers such as denial of access or notifiable disease are separate extensions that must be bought.

Not what your accountant means. The insurance definition is turnover, adjusted for stock and work in progress, less a short list of uninsured working expenses, typically purchases, carriage and freight, discounts allowed and bad debts. Wages, rent, rates and most overheads stay inside the insured figure, because those bills carry on.

Because you still have to pay the people you will need when you reopen. If skilled staff are laid off after a fire they do not wait, and the business restarts rather than recovers. The insurance definition keeps payroll in for exactly that reason, which is why the insured figure is usually much larger than the accounting one.

Long enough for the business to get back to where it would have been. Twelve months is the common default and is frequently too short once insurer investigation, planning, procurement, construction and winning back customers are counted. Insurers typically offer twelve, eighteen, twenty-four and thirty-six months. There is no authoritative recommended figure.

The indemnity period is however long the results of the business are actually affected. The maximum indemnity period is the cap shown in the schedule. A claim runs until the business recovers or the cap bites, whichever comes first, so choosing twelve months does not mean recovery will take twelve months.

You declare an estimated gross profit, the premium is charged provisionally on it, and cover is capped at 133.3% of the estimate, a third more than you declared. After the period you declare the actual figure and the premium adjusts. Average is waived, which removes the risk of a proportionate cut for modest under-estimation.

No. The cap is applied to whatever figure you declared, so one third more than too little is still too little. The headroom exists to absorb growth and inflation during the year. Under-declaring also exposes the business under the Insurance Act 2015, where an insurer can reduce a claim in proportion to the premium it would have charged.

At least five million pounds, which is the statutory minimum, though most insurers write ten million as standard. The certificate must be available to employees. The fine is up to two thousand five hundred pounds for each day you are uninsured, and up to one thousand pounds for failing to display or produce the certificate.

There is no statutory minimum and no published data on what is typical. The limit is set by your contracts: public sector procurement, main contractors, landlords and trade associations commonly require five or ten million pounds. Read what your largest contracts demand and buy at least that much.

No, and the difference matters. Public liability covers injury and damage arising from your operations, usually per occurrence. Products liability covers harm caused by goods after they have left you, and is usually written in the annual aggregate, meaning one faulty batch producing a series of claims can exhaust the whole limit.

Usually not. Since Lloyd’s required its syndicates to be explicit about cyber in 2020 and 2021, policies generally state expressly whether it is covered, and most exclude it. The gap worth checking is cyber-caused physical damage, which an excluded property section and a data-focused cyber policy can both decline.

Under the Insurance Act 2015 a business must make a fair presentation of the risk. For an innocent breach the remedy is usually proportionate: if the insurer would have charged more, it can reduce the claim in proportion to the premium difference. Only deliberate or reckless breaches allow the insurer to avoid the policy outright.

There is no standard price and we do not publish example premiums, because the policy is rated individually. The premium is built from the sums insured, the construction and location of each site, what the business does inside them, turnover and wage roll, the gross profit and indemnity period, the liability limits and the claims history.