Aston Lark discusses: Tenants improvements cover

If you don’t own the building your business operates out of and you have made some improvements to it, it’s important to realise it may not be covered by your landlord’s insurance. This is what I’ll be discussing this month, as part of our series on insurance for funeral directors. I hope you found the last article regarding agreed value of benefit to you and that you have begun conversations with your insurers about insuring your specialist vehicles on this basis. In this article, I hope to shed light on tenants improvements cover and what you should be insuring in a leased property. Many of you do not own the buildings that you trade from, often leasing vacant properties from landlords as ‘shells’ which need considerable structural and cosmetic improvements before being fit for use as your funeral home. In leasing the property from a landlord, the chances are that you will not be responsible for insuring the building itself, unless your landlord makes you specifically obliged to by contract. So who insures the improvements you’ve made to the structure itself to make the building fit for purpose? Be it the installation of partition walls, the installation of a fixed air conditioning system or roller shutter doors, these fixed improvements to the structure of the building are known as tenants improvements and are not the responsibility of the landlord to insure - they are yours. In the event of a claim, the landlord’s insurers would only reinstate the building back to its original state, not including any improvements you’ve made to the building to make it work for you. This could therefore leave the improvements made uninsured and your investments in the property at risk. This is why we’d recommend tenants improvements cover. It need not be expensive so please have a chat with your insurance providers to ensure that you and your business assets are covered correctly. Should you require any further information on the topic discussed above, please do not hesitate to contact me on 0208 256 4927. As previously stated, I am really keen to write about topics that matter to you so if you have any ideas for future articles, please let me know and I’d be more than happy to address these for you. Yours faithfully, Colin Powell, account handler, Aston Lark funeraldirectors@astonlark.com