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FCA FRN 724952 · Co. No. 07014570 · Bristol
§ Commercial insurance

Distribution and wholesale insurance - UK broker guide

Apex Insurance Brokers · Last reviewed: June 2026

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FRN 724952. Companies House 07014570. Cover availability and terms depend on insurer underwriting at the time of quotation.

If your business buys product in bulk and moves it on, whether that is pallets through a cash and carry, containers landing at Royal Portbury Dock, FBA inbound at an Amazon UK fulfilment centre, or a Shopify D2C brand running out of a 3PL in Avonmouth, you have a stock-and-movement risk that does not fit a generic SME package. Stock sits in the wrong place at the wrong time. A pallet drops in a curtain-sider between Felixstowe and Bristol. Your customer's accounts team go quiet, and three weeks later their administrator's letter lands.

This page is the omnibus hub for distribution and wholesale buyers, broader than the deeper treatment at /commercial/wholesaler-distributor/. It covers traditional wholesale, importers, exporters, online sellers across Amazon, Shopify, eBay and TikTok Shop, D2C brand operators, brand storage at 3PL, and specialist distribution into regulated channels. We place these risks for clients across Bristol, Avonmouth, Bridgwater, Cardiff, Newport and the wider M4/M5 corridor.

What clients ask us for is consistently the same thing: cover that follows the stock, not the address.

What distribution and wholesale insurance is

Distribution and wholesale insurance, as the UK market actually structures it, is a combined commercial package. Material damage on buildings, fixtures and contents. Stock as a separately rated heading, often with seasonal uplifts. Business interruption on gross profit with an indemnity period long enough to source replacement stock and rebuild customer relationships. Public and products liability. Goods in transit. Employers' liability. For international movement, marine cargo. For exposure to bad debts, trade credit. For e-commerce operators, cyber. And, increasingly, the cover that pulls most of the above together for a stock-heavy business: stock throughput.

Off-the-shelf SME products (Hiscox 606, Aviva Fast Trade, AXA Business, Allianz Commercial Select) work tolerably well up to roughly £500k of stock at one location, a single premises, no overseas suppliers, no e-commerce of any scale, and no concentration in one product line. Above that, things start to break. Stock declared at average is undercut by a Christmas peak. The single-location limit will not flex for stock held briefly at a co-packer. The transit limit assumes your own van; it does not contemplate a contracted carrier moving £80k of consumer electronics in a third-party trailer. Marine cargo is rarely embedded. Trade credit is never embedded. Products liability inner limits sit at £2m when your largest grocery customer's contract demands £5m.

Where Apex earns its keep is in the second half of that progression. We place these risks with the markets that do not deal direct, present the risk so underwriters see what you actually do (not what the trade code says you do), and advocate at claim. Stock claims are rarely clean. There is almost always a dispute about valuation basis, about where the stock sat when the loss occurred, and about whether the cover responded under property or under transit. A broker who understands that pinch point at placement is the broker you want when a claim arrives.

The covers you actually need

Stock throughput

Stock throughput is the most underrated cover in the distribution market, and the one we recommend for most clients turning more than around £3m or holding stock in more than one location. A single policy follows the goods from the manufacturer's gate, through ocean or air freight, into your warehouse, out to a co-packer or 3PL, on to your customer, and through any brief processing windows. One policy, one set of terms, one limit, no gap.

The alternative is to stack marine cargo, property stock, transit and storage across two or three policies. In practice this creates gap claims. Stock damaged at a sub-contractor's warehouse the property insurer does not recognise as an insured location. Goods in a haulier's yard overnight that fall between transit ending and storage beginning. A freight forwarder consolidating a shipment in a location no one disclosed. We have seen all three.

Stock throughput cuts those gaps, gives a single limit usually pitched at the largest single-location exposure plus an inland transit and marine catastrophe component, and reads more cleanly at claim. The trade-off is that it is rated on turnover rather than peak stock value. For mid-market wholesalers and growing e-commerce brands it usually comes out cheaper than the stacked alternative once the seasonal peak is loaded in.

Material damage

Buildings (where you own the freehold or have an FRI lease), tenant's improvements, plant, fixtures, contents, computers and stock. Sums insured on a reinstatement basis. Index-linked at renewal, but the index has lagged build-cost inflation since 2022, so we sense check declared values against a quantity surveyor's estimate where the building exposure is material. Underinsurance and average is the single largest avoidable cause of claim disappointment we see.

Stock cover

Stock is typically rated on declared value, with a sum insured reflecting the maximum at risk through the policy year. Seasonal uplifts (pre-Christmas, Q4, Black Friday, Easter for food and drink) need to be agreed in advance: most policies allow a 20–30% uplift for a defined period without endorsement, anything beyond needs to be flagged. First loss limits are an alternative for very high-value stock with low aggregation, where the underwriter is comfortable with the EML logic.

Theft and robbery

Theft is normally covered following forcible and violent entry to the premises. Robbery is the threat or use of violence to a person on premises. The two need to be read together: a polite hold-up at the till without a broken window or door is a robbery loss, not a theft loss, and a policy that only covers theft is not going to respond. For wholesalers with significant cash handling or high-value pickable stock (vape, alcohol, electronics, fragrance) we make sure both are in place with realistic limits and proper definitions.

Business interruption

Gross profit basis, on a 24-month indemnity period as standard for distribution. Twelve months is rarely enough: rebuilding a customer base, re-tendering for grocery slots, restocking with goods that have a six-month lead time, all take longer than people expect. Dependent supplier cover (sometimes called Denial of Supply or Dependent Property) is the extension we push hardest. If your largest supplier's plant burns down, you have a problem. Specify named suppliers where the exposure is concentrated.

Public liability

£5m as standard, £10m where customer contracts demand it (most national grocers, most local authorities, most large landlords). Limits scale with turnover and visitor footfall.

Products liability

This is the cover distributors most often misunderstand. Under the Consumer Protection Act 1987, section 2, a producer is liable for damage caused by a defective product. The definition extends to any party who imports the product into the UK, and to any supplier who cannot identify the manufacturer or importer up the chain. If you sell a parallel import, a grey market product, a white-labelled OEM product, or anything where the supply chain is opaque, you are exposed as if you were the manufacturer. We see this in parallel-imported electricals, white-labelled supplements, own-brand consumer goods sourced from Asia, and FBA businesses that resell across borders.

Limits: £5m typical, £10m where contracts require it, USA/Canada cover usually excluded as standard because the rating shifts hard. Recall cover is normally a separate sub-limit or a separate policy.

Goods in transit

Own vehicles plus contracted carriers. Limits per vehicle, per consignment and per load. Watch: cover during loading and unloading, cover for goods carried by sub-contracted hauliers, and the territorial extension. Many GIT policies stop at UK and Ireland; if you run pallets to Rotterdam or Dublin, that needs to be specified.

Marine cargo

For international stock movement. Institute Cargo Clauses (A) is all-risks, the standard for finished consumer goods; (B) and (C) are progressively more restricted, suitable for low-value bulk or commodities. Institute War Clauses and Institute Strikes Clauses are standard extensions. War risks have hardened since the Red Sea disruption from late 2023; underwriters price Suez routing differently from Cape of Good Hope routing.

Cyber

For e-commerce operators, cyber is not optional. PCI breach response, account takeover, ransomware (which can shut a fulfilment operation as effectively as a fire), business interruption from a Shopify or BigCommerce outage, third-party supplier disruption. See /commercial/commercial-cyber/ for the deeper treatment.

Trade credit

Covers bad debts on B2B sales. The three main markets are Atradius, Allianz Trade (Euler Hermes) and Coface. With insolvency volumes elevated through 2024 and into 2025, trade credit has shifted from a nice-to-have to a balance-sheet protector for any wholesaler with concentrated customer books. Underwriters set credit limits buyer by buyer, and the policy responds when those buyers default or enter formal insolvency.

Employers' liability

£10m minimum, statutory. For warehouse operations, manual handling, MHE (forklifts, reach trucks, electric pallet trucks) and racking collapses are the main loss drivers. Underwriters want to see LOLER inspections, PUWER compliance, and the racking inspection regime (SEMA-trained inspector annually as a minimum).

Sector-specific risks we see most

The stock-in-the-wrong-place problem

A wholesaler ships £180k of seasonal stock to a co-packer for repackaging into retailer-ready cases. A fire at the co-packer destroys the stock. The wholesaler's property policy lists their own warehouse only. The co-packer's policy covers their building but excludes goods held in trust on a sub-limit of £25k. Stock throughput would have caught the whole loss. The stacked policies do not. We have seen variants six or seven times in the last three years.

Underinsurance at peak

A homeware brand declares stock at £600k. A November burglary takes £210k. The loss adjuster establishes that stock was sitting at £1.1m at the time of loss because of Q4 build-up. Average applies: the claim pays out at roughly 55% of the actual loss. Declared value needs to reflect the peak, or the policy needs an agreed seasonal uplift clause. We script this into placement.

Products liability for the importer who did not realise they were one

A small Shopify brand sources phone accessories from a Shenzhen supplier through Alibaba and sells through Amazon FBA. A user is injured when a charger overheats. The Shenzhen supplier no longer responds to emails. As importer of record, the Shopify operator is the producer for Consumer Protection Act purposes. Their broker had sold them a £1m liability policy with no products extension because the trade was classed as retail. We rewrite a lot of these mid-term.

The Amazon FBA stock-and-recovery gap

Amazon's liability for damage to seller stock is capped, slow to dispute, and reimbursed on Amazon's valuation rather than yours. For sellers running meaningful FBA inventory we recommend stock throughput that includes goods at third-party fulfilment locations as a named extension, with the limit pitched at peak FBA inventory.

Battery and flammable stock

E-bike batteries, vape and e-liquid stock, candles, and lithium-ion in general have become a hardening sub-market through 2023–2025. Several insurers have withdrawn appetite for e-bike battery storage above modest volumes; others require specific suppression (sprinklers compliant with FM Global guidance, segregated storage, charging cabinets). If your warehouse holds significant lithium battery stock, expect a harder placement and a more demanding survey.

Cannabis-adjacent and regulated stock

CBD oil, hemp-derived consumer goods, and any product sitting in the grey area between novel food regulation and recreational supplement have become genuinely difficult to place. Several mainstream markets exclude these stocks outright. We approach Lloyd's specialty markets for these risks and prepare clients for the conversation about exclusions.

Multi-jurisdictional product liability

D2C brands selling across the US and EU from a UK base inherit USA/Canada products liability exposure that most UK policies exclude as standard. A product made in China, sold by a Bristol brand, shipped to a Californian consumer, can pull a UK seller into US-court litigation. We rate USA/Canada extensions where the exposure is real, or place a US-domiciled liability programme where volumes justify it.

Bristol & South West considerations

Avonmouth distribution park is one of the heaviest concentrations of large-scale logistics property in the UK outside the Midlands golden triangle. DHL, Yusen, GXO, Wincanton, Lidl's RDC, Tesco Avonmouth and IKEA's distribution all operate in the cluster. The implication for stock and BI rating is that the Severn flood plain runs through it. Insurers want to see the Environment Agency flood zone for the postcode and, where the site is in Zone 2 or 3, the resilience measures in place. We have placed enough Avonmouth risks to know which insurers will write the postcode and which will not.

Bridgwater is the second cluster: Morrisons RDC, supply contracts to Hinkley Point and to Bridgwater Power Station, and a growing M5-junction-23 footprint. Royal Portbury Dock handles vehicle imports (the largest UK port for new car imports) and bulk imports, the natural landing point for clients with cross-Channel and short-sea routes. Severn Beach, Western Approach and the Central Park estates carry overflow distribution capacity.

Cribbs Causeway and the wider North Bristol logistics ring serve both consumer-facing distribution and an emerging cluster of small Shopify and Amazon FBA operators run out of 3PLs in Yate, Chipping Sodbury and the Sandy Park/Memery Crescent estates. We pick up a lot of e-commerce SME enquiries from this belt: brands turning £500k–£3m with a single 3PL relationship and a need for stock throughput rather than the policy their first broker placed three years ago.

Across the Severn, Cardiff (Penarth Road, the eastern industrial estates), Newport (Llanwern, Pengam, Imperial Park) and Magor sit on the same M4 corridor logic. FCA-authorised broking is UK-wide and the M4 makes Cardiff and Newport closer than parts of Somerset in operational terms.

How to get it right at renewal

Start 60–90 days out. For distribution and wholesale risks the presentation matters more than for almost any other commercial class. We put together a renewal pack that gives underwriters everything in one place: a five-year claims summary with open and closed reserves split, full schedule of locations with EML, peak stock declarations month by month, supplier concentration (top five as percentage of turnover), customer concentration, and the contracts those concentrations sit under.

For premises, COPE information (construction, occupancy, protection, exposure). Photos of the warehouse, loading bay, racking layout, fire suppression, alarm grade (Grade A signalling is the realistic benchmark for stock-heavy risks, dual-path where the stock value justifies it). LOLER reports on MHE. SEMA racking inspection certificate. Fire risk assessment under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, updated. Sprinkler servicing records where applicable.

For transit, the carriage conditions you trade under (RHA, CMR for international, your own bespoke), the carriers on your approved list, and the value-density of typical loads. For marine, the routing and the Incoterms (and who insures at which leg: a recurring source of dispute is whose policy covers goods sitting on the dock at Felixstowe waiting for collection).

For cyber, your hosting stack, your PCI DSS level if you handle card data directly, MFA, and backup architecture. For trade credit, the buyer book, historic bad debt experience, and the credit control process.

The broker timeline runs: data gathering at 90 days, presentation to market at 60–75 days, return of terms at 45–60 days, negotiation at 30–45 days, decision and incept at 14–21 days. A multi-quote approach is useful because the spread between markets on a complex distribution risk can be wide; a poorly presented multi-quote, however, is worse than a single well-prepared submission, because underwriters share market intelligence and a risk that has been shopped badly carries a stigma into year two.

How Apex helps

We place distribution and wholesale risks across the markets that actually write the class: Allianz, AXA, RSA, Aviva, Zurich, Travelers, HDI, NMU and selected Lloyd's syndicates for stock throughput, marine cargo and harder-to-place sub-classes. We have direct relationships with the trade credit underwriters at Atradius, Allianz Trade and Coface. Independent broker, FCA FRN 724952, Bristol office, fifty-mile catchment from St Mellons to Yeovil.

What we actually do is present the risk properly, push back at claim, prepare renewal early, and keep the awkward conversations honest. If a market is hardening for your stock category, we tell you. If your declared values look light, we say so before underwriters do. If a cover marketed as standard carries inner limits dangerous for your operation, we flag it. Speak to us about a distribution or wholesale risk and we will walk through a no-obligation review of your current programme.

FAQs

Do I legally need distribution insurance?

Employers' liability is the only statutory cover, at £5m minimum (most policies issued at £10m). Everything else is contractual or commercial, but most grocery customers, landlords and freight forwarders will require evidence of public, products, goods in transit and material damage cover before they will trade or let to you.

How much does wholesale insurance cost in the UK?

Premium scales with stock value, turnover, location, fire load and claims history. For a typical Bristol wholesaler turning £2–5m with a single warehouse, a combined package usually runs in the low five figures annually. We quote risk-by-risk and do not publish indicative rates because they would mislead more than they help.

What is stock throughput and do I need it?

Stock throughput is a single policy that follows your stock from supplier through transit, storage, processing and onward to the customer. If you hold stock in more than one location, use a co-packer or 3PL, import from overseas, or operate through Amazon FBA, it almost always works better than stacking property, transit and marine policies.

Can I insure stock at an Amazon FBA warehouse?

Yes, through a stock throughput policy with a named extension for goods at third-party fulfilment locations. Amazon's own liability for damaged or lost seller stock is narrow and slow to recover under, so we recommend cover pitched at peak FBA inventory.

Does my products liability cover the USA and Canada?

By default, no. UK products liability policies normally exclude US/Canada exposure. If you sell into those markets through Shopify, Amazon US or eBay US, we add the extension explicitly with sums insured pitched at the distribution requirement.

What is trade credit insurance and is it worth it?

Trade credit covers your B2B receivables against customer default and insolvency. Atradius, Allianz Trade and Coface are the main markets. With insolvency volumes elevated, we place it for most clients turning above roughly £1m of B2B credit-terms business.

Can I add cyber to my distribution policy?

Cyber is normally placed as a standalone policy rather than as an extension, because the cover and the wording are specialised. We cross-place it alongside the main commercial package and make sure the BI sections of the two policies do not double-count or leave gaps.

What is the difference between stock throughput and marine cargo?

Marine cargo covers the international leg only, port to port and sometimes warehouse to warehouse. Stock throughput covers the full chain, including UK inland transit, storage, processing and final delivery to the end customer.

Do you place importer cover for goods landing at Royal Portbury Dock?

Yes, frequently. We have placed marine and stock throughput cover for clients importing through Portbury, Avonmouth, Felixstowe, Southampton and Dover. The goods, routing and storage profile matter more than the port itself.

How long does a distribution insurance quote take?

For a small online seller, two to five working days from receipt of full information. For a mid-market wholesaler with multiple locations, overseas suppliers and a stock throughput placement, three to five weeks at renewal.

Do you place distribution cover outside Bristol?

Yes. Across the full M4/M5 corridor, into Cardiff and Newport, down to Bridgwater and Taunton, up to Cheltenham and Gloucester, across to Swindon. FCA broking is UK-wide; the Bristol office is where the team sits.

What if my stock is seasonal?

Seasonal uplifts are written into the policy as a named clause. Most insurers allow a 20–30% increase over declared values for a defined period without endorsement; anything beyond that we agree at placement so there is no surprise at claim.

Other sectors we cover

Coverage area

Distribution and wholesale clients come to us from across the Bristol commercial belt and the wider South West. The pillar page at /commercial-insurance-bristol-and-south-west/ covers our broader commercial proposition. City-specific pages include Bristol, Bath, Cardiff, Newport, Gloucester and Swindon, all within natural broking distance and all with active distribution clusters we know well.

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