Tori Gordon

Commercial property is the area Tori knows best, and the question she comes back to most often is how the building sum insured was arrived at in the first place.

Market value, a bank valuation and the purchase price each answer a different question. The figure that matters when a building is damaged is what it would cost to reinstate it, and that can take in demolition and debris removal, professional fees, and rebuilding at what construction costs today rather than what it cost when the policy was first written.

Her aim is to have that conversation while there is still time to change the number, rather than after a claim has tested it.

Tori also raises loss of rent with commercial property owners, because the damage to a building and the financial impact of that damage do not end at the same time.

A tenant who cannot occupy the premises stops paying rent long before the repairs are finished, while the owner keeps the same commitments they had before. Whether that gap is insured, and for how long, is worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering during a claim.

Businesses change faster than their insurance does, and Tori spends time on the places where the two quietly come apart.

The most common one is how the business activities were described to the insurer. A business that has added a service, started bringing in goods from overseas or begun using subcontractors is no longer doing only what its policy says it does, and that difference can matter at claim time.

Importing is one she watches particularly closely, because a business that brings in goods it did not make can still end up carrying product liability for them.

She also finds property owners liability and business liability treated as the same cover doing the same job. They are not, and an owner who trades from their own building has both exposures rather than one.