You didn't just rent a shop. You built one.

Quick answerThere's no separate "retail insurance" wording on the market. What you're actually buying is a business pack, the same core policy used across most trades, built from a small set of sections chosen to match what a shop actually risks losing: the fit-out, the stock on the floor, the shopfront glass, the income if you're forced to close, and your liability if a customer is hurt in your store. Nothing is automatic. You choose each section, and the policy only protects what you deliberately included.

Contents and Stock. On the business packs we place, everything you own inside the shop is insured as one section, called Contents and Stock, with one sum insured. That figure has to be the full replacement cost of everything on site: fit-out, contents, electronic equipment, furniture, plant, machinery, stock and any customer goods you're holding. And of every section on the policy, this one carries the cheapest rate per $100,000 of sum insured, which makes it exactly the wrong section to go small on.

The fit-out side of that figure is everything permanently built into the space: shopfitting, joinery, counters and till points, flooring, lighting, signage, and any plumbing or electrical work done specifically for your shop. If it would need a tradesperson to remove it, it's fit-out, and it's yours to insure at what it would cost to rebuild today, not what it's "worth" after a few years of trading.

The stock side is everything on the shelves and in the back room, insured for what you paid for it, not what you'd sell it for. Retail stock levels move throughout the year, and the sum insured needs to move with them (more on this in the next section).

Glass. Shopfront windows, doors and internal glass, plus the signage often fixed to it. A single large shopfront panel can run into thousands of dollars to replace, and it's usually a cheap add-on most shops never think about until it's smashed.

Business interruption. Covers your fixed costs, rent, wages, loan repayments, and your lost profit while you can't trade and while you're rebuilding your customer flow afterwards. This is the section that decides whether a bad month becomes a closed business.

Public liability. Your legal liability if a customer, delivery driver or passer-by is injured in your store, most commonly a slip or a fall. Most retail leases require you to hold this regardless of what your building insurance decision is. Most public liability policies also bundle in product liability, so if something you sell causes harm after it leaves your shop, the same policy responds. See Public Liability Insurance for the detail.

Theft, money and equipment breakdown. Stock and till contents against theft (insurers usually want evidence of forced entry for an unoccupied premises), money cover for cash in the till and cash in transit to the bank, tools or equipment that leave the store with staff, and equipment breakdown for things like your fridges or coffee machine if food is part of what you sell.

A direct insurer sells you a business pack with the retail boxes ticked. You tell them roughly what you've got, they give you a number, and whether that number was right gets tested for the first time when you actually claim.

We do three things differently before we ever quote your shop:

Your lease gets read. Not skimmed. Read, down to the clause that tells you what you're actually required to insure and what you're required to remove at the end of the term. That clause is where the fit-out gap either gets closed or gets missed.

The automatic seasonal stock uplift already built into your business pack gets checked against your real peak. The packs we place lift your stock cover automatically through a busy season, and most shop owners have never heard of it, let alone checked whether their real Christmas or back-to-school peak fits inside what the clause actually allows. Where it doesn't, that's a case-by-case conversation with us, not something we leave to the policy to sort out on its own.

Glass, equipment breakdown and theft get checked as deliberate decisions, not assumptions. A shopfront window is cheap to insure and expensive to replace. We'd rather have that conversation now than after it's broken.

Quick answerThe mistakes that cost retail tenants money at claim time are rarely about forgetting to buy insurance. They're about a sum insured that was never the full replacement figure, a landlord's policy assumed to stretch further than it does, and cheap sections skipped because nothing had gone wrong yet.

Insuring your Contents and Stock for less than the full replacement cost of everything on site. In our experience, this is the single most common retail mistake. Stand at the door on opening day and price every visible thing at full replacement cost: fit-out, contents, electronic equipment, furniture, plant, machinery, stock and customer goods. That total is your Contents and Stock sum insured. It's the cheapest section on the whole policy per $100,000 of cover, so it is not the place to save money, yet shop owners routinely go small on it because they assume it's expensive.

Assuming the landlord's policy has you covered. It doesn't, and it was never designed to. It insures the building the landlord owns, not the shop you built inside it.

Setting the stock figure once, at renewal, and forgetting it. Most business packs already lift your stock cover automatically once trading runs well above average, but that's a cap, not a guarantee. If your busiest trading month runs higher or longer than the uplift allows, an unchanged sum insured is quietly wrong for the weeks a claim would cost you the most.

Treating public liability as paperwork for the lease. It's on the lease because a customer slipping on a wet floor or being hit by a falling display is a real and common claim in retail, not because a landlord wanted an extra form filled in.

Skipping glass because "it's never happened." A single shopfront panel can cost thousands to replace, and it's usually one of the cheapest sections on the whole policy to add.

Setting an indemnity period that covers the rebuild but not the recovery. A shop that reopens after four months doesn't walk straight back to its old revenue. Customers found somewhere else in the meantime. Business interruption cover needs to run long enough to get your trade back, not just your doors open.