Commercial insurance brokers for Emerald and the Central Highlands

Most of our clients are spread across Australia, and have been since 2010, so looking after a business a long way from the nearest office is how we have always worked. The team that looks after Emerald and the surrounding Central Highlands works from our Bundaberg office. For a commercial policy that is a change of address rather than a change of service: the same book, handled the same way, from a different desk.

The reading, the market work, the renewal conversation and the claim are all done by phone, email and video. One named account manager stays on your file rather than passing you around.

You can see the Bundaberg team, the address and the office number on the Bundaberg office page. For a new commercial enquiry, 07 4980 4222 reaches an account manager directly.

Rebuilding in a regional centre is not the same job as rebuilding in a capital city, and it is not only the bill that is different. The job takes longer, because trades and materials have to get there before anything starts. Both of those belong in the figure your policy is built on.

Across the commercial buildings that come to us after a renewal shock, we usually find the sum insured sitting 30 to 40 per cent below what a rebuild would actually cost. That figure comes from a self-selected group, owners who ring because the premium jumped, so it is what we see and not a market average. The point stands either way: nobody discovers a shortfall at a convenient moment.

So we commission a desktop valuation at no cost to you, a registered valuer's desktop assessment of the rebuild figure, commissioned for our purposes as your broker, to inform the advice we give you. On the commercial-building business pack policies we place, we will not put cover below 60% of that figure. That is a floor rather than full protection, and we would rather say so. These wordings test the sum insured against at least 80 per cent of the building's value. So at 60 per cent, a partial loss still pays only around three-quarters of it.

The two loss cases are worth keeping apart, because they fail differently. On a partial loss the average clause cuts the payout in proportion to how far short the sum insured was. On a total loss you are paid the full sum insured, and only then find out whether it rebuilds the building. Out here that is the case where a city benchmark hurts most.

The longer a rebuild takes, the more the business interruption period matters, and regional rebuilds take longer. In our experience most business pack policies we review have no business interruption cover at all, or a period too short to survive a rebuild.

For the indemnity period, we strongly recommend 24 or 36 months, depending on the client. The minimum is 18 months. If your rebuild depends on trades and materials that have to travel, get the longer period priced before you settle for the minimum.

We remarket every policy we hold at each renewal rather than rolling the incumbent over. That matters more in a regional town, where the number of insurers genuinely interested in a risk is smaller than it looks.