It’s is often a wise decision to rent your business’s office or storefront, given that you don’t have to take on the full responsibility of ownership that comes with buying it outright. However, renting does not mean that you don’t have to buy property insurance for your company. Rather, it’s essential to tailor your benefits to the liabilities you face by operating in a rented space.
You need your own property coverage for the essential fact that your landlord’s property insurance won’t cover your own commercial possessions housed within the rented space. As a result, you should consider your own property insurance as essential to your own plan for success.
Property Insurance for Owned Assets
You might not own your office space, but you own all the assets housed within, and they’re critical to your business’s overall success. Your property insurance is therefore an essential piece of protection for these items. Usually, it will cover:
- Inventory and stock
- Furnitures
- Computer equipment
- Certain personal possessions brought to the workplace
If there is a fire in your business, then your own coverage can pay to help you repair or replace your own property. However, it will not cover the building itself, since this isn’t something you own. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure your coverage provides maximum protection for all your assets, and nothing more.
Perils Covered By Commercial Property Insurance
Your commercial property policy will cover you against unintentional and unavoidable property damage. These can include a variety of incidents, such as:
However, normal wear and tear, damage due to neglect and damage caused by flooding, earthquakes or similar niche hazards will not have coverage under most plans. Therefore, be sure to work with your insurance agent to understand exactly where your policy both starts and stops.
Maintaining Your Coverage
You probably have plans to grow your business. Therefore, you will likely accumulate more property assets and continually upgrade or replace existing systems. Whatever changes you make to your assets will change your overall property value, and therefore might merit changes to your property insurance.
Enlist the help of your business insurance to determine exactly what changes to your property coverage you need to make. For example, whether you are simply upgrading your existing computer system, or buying a significant amount of new hardware, the value of your property will likely increase, and you need to update your property insurance appropriately.
But remember, property insurance is just part of your business’s overall commercial insurance portfolio. You will also likely need general liability insurance, business interruption coverage, workers’ compensation insurance, commercial auto insurance and a host of other policies that, when combined, will offer you optimized protection in all facets of your operations.