Commercial insurance brokers for the Sunshine Coast
From Caloundra to Noosa, we look after commercial buildings and business premises for owners who would rather have the sum insured checked than indexed.
A renewal notice tells you the new premium. It does not tell you the sum insured behind it stopped matching your building years ago.
For owners and managers of commercial buildings, shops, offices and business premises across the Sunshine Coast. Renting rather than owning? Start at business owners who rent.
How we look after Sunshine Coast clients
Most of our clients are spread across Australia, and have been since 2010. Our offices are in New Farm, Brisbane, and in Bundaberg, and the office is where the broker sits rather than where the client has to be. Your account manager is one named person, and the same person handles the renewal, the mid-term change and the claim.
Everything a commercial policy actually needs is done by phone, email and video: reading the wording, testing the sum insured, going back to the market, arguing a claim that has been underpaid. That is how it is done for a client two suburbs from our front door as well.
What is the gap that opens between renewals?
Quick answerYour premium and your sum insured are not the same number, and they do not move at the same speed. The premium is repriced every year and you see it. The sum insured is indexed quietly by a smaller amount, so the cover falls behind the building while the cost of the cover rises. The gap that opens between them only ever opens one way.
Across the renewals we are shown, the premium is commonly up 15 to 20 per cent while the insurer has indexed the sum insured by only 5 to 10 per cent. The premium moving is what gets noticed; the difference between those two lines is the part that costs money.
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 is what we find on a self-selected group: owners who ring because they have just been repriced without a conversation, which usually means nobody has properly reviewed the file in years. It is not a market average and we will not dress it up as one.
The fix is unglamorous. We commission a desktop valuation at no cost to you, a registered valuer's desktop assessment of the rebuild figure, and we work from that number instead of from last year's number plus a bit.
Tourism tenancies, and the cover most policies get wrong
Where a Sunshine Coast building is let to hospitality, retail or tourism tenants, what a rebuild really costs the owner is not just the building. It is the rent that stops while the building is unusable.
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. Our default indemnity period is 18 months, we recommend 24 wherever we can, and 12 months is a floor we only give on a client's express instruction. A twelve-month period on a building that takes eighteen months to approve, demolish and rebuild is a gap you find at the worst possible moment.
If you own the building and occupy it as well, there are two clocks running: the rebuild, and your own business getting back to where it was. That is the case where we push hardest for 24 months.
What Sunshine Coast clients say
I would very much like to thank Debbie Blanco for all her help in sorting out insurance to cover our commercial building on the Sunshine Coast. I had a lot of questions and she was very quick to respond and easy to talk to, and was able to give me all the answers that I needed. I will be using her services again for other insurances in the future. Cheers, Ken.
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Insuring on the Sunshine Coast: the common questions
Do you have a Sunshine Coast office?
My building is let to cafes and tourism operators. What does that change?
Do you only handle commercial buildings?
What to read before you ring
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We work with commercial clients in every state, by phone and video. Call 07 3292 1111.
Talk to a broker about your Sunshine Coast building
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The information on this page is general in nature and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on it, consider whether it is appropriate for your circumstances. Where the information relates to a particular insurance product, consider the relevant Product Disclosure Statement before making a decision.