Business owners policy
Coverwatch places the business owners policy for storefronts, restaurants, and service businesses that want liability and property in one place. We size each piece to your lease and contracts, then bolt on what the bundle leaves out, so the policy responds when a claim lands instead of just clearing a renewal.
- Liability + property in one bundled policy
- Less than monoline bundle savings
- 60+ carriers shopped for your risk
At a glance
- What it covers
- Your liability to other people, your own building and contents, and the income you lose after a covered shutdown, all in one policy.
- What it doesn't
- Your employees, your vehicles, and your professional mistakes, each of which sits in a separate policy.
Trusted by 60+ carrier partners
What does a business owners policy cover?
A business owners policy, or BOP, bundles general liability, commercial property, and business income coverage into one packaged policy for small and mid-size businesses. It pays third-party injury and property claims, repairs your building and contents after a covered loss, and replaces income lost while you are shut down.
How we get you covered
We take business owners policy to 60+ markets, build it to fit your business, and keep it compliant.
Read your risk
We map what could actually go wrong in your operation, where a claim would come from, and who would bring it.
Shop 60+ markets
We take your risk to the carriers that know your class and make them compete on price and terms.
Build the endorsements
We add the endorsement wording that decides whether the policy responds to a claim, beyond the base form.
Keep you compliant
We handle the COIs, additional-insured certs, and renewals, so you are never the one chasing paperwork.
Who needs business owners policy
Lower-hazard small and mid-size businesses that rent or own space, hold inventory, and want liability and property in one policy. What changes by industry is the property value at stake, the income exposure, and the endorsements worth adding.
Restaurants
Property-heavy operations with kitchen fire, refrigeration, and customer-injury exposure, which is why equipment breakdown and spoilage usually ride on the BOP.
Fast food
High foot traffic and fryer exposure raise both the liability and the property side, with equipment breakdown protecting refrigeration.
Fine dining
Higher-value fit-out and inventory mean larger property limits, and liquor and guest-injury exposure shape the liability piece.
Restaurant groups
Multiple locations push past single-location BOP eligibility and often move to a package policy with scheduled property.
Retail
Storefront retailers are the classic BOP buyer: a leased space, inventory and fixtures to insure, and steady customer foot traffic driving slip-and-fall and theft exposure.
Perishable inventory and heavy refrigeration make the property and equipment-breakdown coverage central, alongside the usual customer-injury liability.
What's covered, and what isn't
In the policy
General liability for customer claims
The liability half of the policy pays when a third party is hurt or their property is damaged on your premises or by your operations. A customer slips on a wet floor, you pay their injury claim and your defense, even when the suit is groundless.
Your building
If you own the building, the policy repairs or rebuilds it after a covered loss such as fire, wind, or vandalism. Tenants skip this and insure their improvements instead, since the landlord carries the structure on a separate policy.
Business personal property
Your contents are covered: inventory, furniture, fixtures, equipment, and the improvements you made to a leased space. A fire that destroys your stock and fit-out is paid at replacement cost when you insure to the right value, not the depreciated cash value.
Business interruption and lost income
When a covered loss shuts you down, the policy replaces the income you would have earned and keeps paying fixed costs like rent and payroll during the rebuild. The standard form runs for a twelve-month period of restoration, which is the window it keeps paying.
Equipment and contents off-site
The property coverage follows your gear in the ordinary course of business, including newly acquired property and limited cover for items briefly away from the premises. It is built for the everyday movement of a small business, not for a full inland-marine schedule.
Signage and outdoor property
Your exterior sign and certain outdoor fixtures are covered against covered perils up to a stated sublimit. For a storefront that depends on its sign, the line matters, and a larger or custom sign is the reason to confirm the limit before you sign.
Not in the policy
Employee injuries on the job
A BOP does not pay when your own employee is hurt at work. That is workers compensation, which is required by statute in nearly every state once you hire your first employee.
Covered by Workers Compensation
Owned or business-use vehicles
Accidents involving cars, trucks, or vans the business owns or uses are excluded. Business vehicles belong on a commercial auto policy, which a BOP never includes.
Covered by Commercial Auto
Professional mistakes and bad advice
Claims that you gave faulty advice, made a service error, or failed to deliver what you promised are not in the bundle. That exposure is professional liability, also called errors and omissions.
Covered by Professional Liability
Catastrophic claims over the policy limit
A liability judgment that exceeds your each-occurrence limit leaves the excess unpaid. A commercial umbrella sits over the BOP and extends the limit when a single claim runs past it.
Covered by Commercial Umbrella
A data breach or cyber attack
Breach notification, ransomware, and the income you lose to a cyber event are not in a standard BOP. That gap is filled by cyber liability, the single most common add-on for businesses that hold customer data.
Covered by Cyber Liability
Claims business owners policy pays
Fire damages the building and stops the income
A kitchen or electrical fire damages the space and forces a closure during the rebuild. The property side pays to restore the building and contents, and business interruption replaces the income lost while the doors are shut.
$100K–$1M+
Customer slip-and-fall liability
A customer slips on a wet floor or trips over a display and is injured. The liability side pays the bodily injury claim and your legal defense, the most common general liability claim a storefront files.
$20K–$250K
Theft of inventory and equipment
A break-in clears out stock, registers, and equipment. The business personal property coverage pays to replace the stolen contents up to your limit, subject to the deductible you chose.
$10K–$100K
Business interruption after a covered loss
Wind or water from a covered peril closes the location for weeks. The policy keeps paying rent, payroll, and lost profit through the period of restoration, so fixed costs do not sink the business while it is dark.
$25K–$500K+
Ranges are typical property and liability bands for these claim types, not a quote. Actual exposure depends on your industry, property value, and limits.
How much coverage you need
There is no single right limit. Two things set the property side and the liability side, and you size each to the higher of what your value and your contracts demand.
- The property value you have to insure
- The building, contents, and fit-out you would have to replace set your property limits. Underinsure them and a coinsurance penalty cuts your payout on a partial loss, so size the limits to full replacement cost, not to what you paid.
- The liability floor your contracts demand
- Leases, lenders, and vendors set a liability minimum you must carry, usually one million per occurrence to start. A bigger landlord or a national customer pushes that higher, which is when an umbrella goes over the BOP to reach the number.
- Standard commercial lease
- $1M / occ
- SBA or commercial lender
- Property = loan balance
- Franchise agreement
- $1M / $2M + franchisor AI
A typical retail or office lease requires one million per occurrence in general liability and names the landlord as additional insured before you take possession.
An SBA loan secured by the building or equipment requires property coverage at least equal to the loan amount, with the lender named as loss payee or mortgagee.
Most franchisors require one million per occurrence and two million aggregate, and that the franchisor be added as additional insured as a condition of the franchise.
- General liability, each occurrence
- $1,000,000
- General liability, general aggregate
- $2,000,000
- Building limit
- Replacement cost
- Business personal property
- Schedule your contents
- Business income, period of restoration
- 12 months
The most the liability side pays for any single claim or incident, such as one customer injury. This is the number most commercial leases and vendor contracts set as their minimum.
The ceiling on every liability claim the policy pays in one policy year, combined. Once it is used up, the liability coverage is exhausted until renewal.
The amount the property side pays to rebuild. Insure the building to its full replacement cost: fall below roughly 80 percent of that value and a coinsurance penalty cuts what the policy pays on a partial loss.
A separate limit covering inventory, equipment, and fit-out. Set it to the full replacement value of everything you would have to buy again, because it is paid down dollar for dollar in a loss.
How long the income coverage keeps paying after a covered loss: the time it takes to repair and reopen, capped at twelve months on the standard form. It is the window, not a dollar cap.
Endorsements that close the gaps
The base form is the start. These add-ons are where the policy gets built to fit your business.
Cyber liability
Adds breach notification, ransomware, and cyber business interruption, the gap a standard BOP leaves open. Essential for any business that stores customer or payment data.
Employment practices liability (EPLI)
Covers wrongful termination, discrimination, and harassment claims brought by employees. The exposure starts the moment you hire and is not in the base policy.
Equipment breakdown
Pays for sudden mechanical or electrical breakdown of HVAC, refrigeration, and other systems, including spoiled stock. A restaurant or grocer relying on refrigeration usually adds it.
Hired and non-owned auto
Extends liability to vehicles you rent or to employees driving their own cars on business errands. It fills a slice of auto exposure the BOP and a personal auto policy both leave open.
Questions buyers actually ask
A business owners policy, or BOP, is a packaged policy that combines three coverages a typical small business needs into one contract. The first is general liability, which pays third-party injury and property-damage claims plus your defense. The second is commercial property, which covers your building if you own it and your business personal property, meaning inventory, equipment, and fit-out. The third is business income, which replaces lost revenue and keeps paying fixed costs after a covered loss closes you down. Carriers price the bundle below the sum of the three monoline policies, which is the main reason eligible businesses buy it rather than assembling coverage piece by piece.
General liability is a single coverage that pays for third-party bodily injury, property damage, and personal and advertising injury claims. A BOP is a bundle that includes that same general liability and adds two more coverages on top: commercial property for your building and contents, and business income for the revenue you lose after a covered shutdown. Put simply, general liability protects you when you harm someone else, while a BOP also protects your own property and your income. Almost any business can buy standalone general liability, but only eligible lower-hazard small businesses qualify for a BOP. If you rent space, hold inventory, or own equipment, the property and income pieces in a BOP usually matter as much as the liability.
Both bundle property and liability, but they serve different sizes of business. A BOP is a pre-packaged form, ISO BP 00 03, built for smaller, lower-hazard risks, with standard eligibility caps around 35,000 square feet and 6 million dollars in sales per location. It is simpler and cheaper, but less flexible. A commercial package policy, or CPP, is assembled from separate property and general liability coverage parts and can add lines a BOP cannot, such as commercial auto or a larger inland-marine schedule. Businesses that outgrow BOP eligibility, run a higher-hazard operation, or need coverages the bundle excludes typically move from a BOP to a CPP at renewal.
Eligibility depends on size and hazard. Standard ISO rules are designed for risks under roughly 35,000 square feet of floor area and 6 million dollars in annual gross sales per location, and they favor lower-hazard classes such as retail stores, offices, restaurants, and service businesses. Certain operations are generally ineligible regardless of size, including manufacturers, auto service stations, bars, and some financial institutions, because their exposure does not fit the packaged form. A business that exceeds the caps or falls into an excluded class moves to a commercial package policy instead. The cleanest way to know is to be quoted, since carriers apply their own appetite on top of the ISO baseline.
A BOP leaves out several exposures that need their own policy. It does not cover employee injuries, which require workers compensation, mandated by statute in nearly every state once you hire. It does not cover vehicles the business owns or uses, which belong on commercial auto. It does not cover professional mistakes or bad advice, which need professional liability. It does not pay a claim that runs past your liability limit, which is what a commercial umbrella is for. And a standard BOP excludes data breaches and cyber attacks, flood and earthquake, and large-scale cyber loss. Several of these, such as cyber, EPLI, and equipment breakdown, can be added back to the BOP by endorsement rather than bought as separate policies.
Average BOP premiums run around 684 dollars a year, or about 57 dollars a month, though they range from roughly 400 to over 6,000 dollars depending on your industry, property value, claim history, and limits. The most common liability limit is one million per occurrence and two million aggregate, which is what most leases and contracts require to start. On the property side, size the building and contents limits to full replacement cost, because insuring below about 80 percent of value triggers a coinsurance penalty on a partial loss. Carry the higher of what your contracts demand and what a serious loss would actually cost, and add an umbrella when a landlord or customer pushes the liability floor past your primary limit.
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