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.
Most office insurance gets bought as an afterthought. Firms put real time into their professional indemnity wording, then bolt on a packaged office policy with a £50,000 contents limit, a £2m public liability and a token cyber endorsement. Then a sprinkler head pops on the floor above on a Friday evening, twenty staff can't access the office on Monday, and the questions start: who insures the tenant's improvements, what's the indemnity period on business interruption, and does the operator's master policy at the serviced office actually pay out for our laptops?
This page is for office-based professional firms in Bristol and the South West — accountants, consultants, architects, asset managers, fintech, law firms, marketing agencies — who already have PI in place and want the rest of the programme done properly. Whether you own your floor at Glass Wharf, rent a suite at Runway East, share a Spike Island conversion or hot-desk at a Temple Quay Regus, the office policy is the unglamorous backbone of your insurance programme.
The typical claim is not dramatic: escape of water from the floor above, a stolen MacBook, a slip in reception, ransomware locking out the practice management system. The bigger the firm, the more expensive each gets, particularly the business interruption tail, which off-the-shelf wordings underestimate badly.
What office insurance is
Office insurance is the UK market's term for combined property, liability and crime cover for a professional services firm. A policy bundles contents, optional buildings, business interruption, money, public liability, employers' liability, glass, legal expenses and a basic cyber endorsement into one schedule. Insurers brand it "Office Combined" or "Professional Office"; at the small end it's part of a packaged SME product (Hiscox 606, AXA Business, Aviva Fast Trade).
Off-the-shelf SME products work up to a point. A five-person consultancy with £30,000 of kit, no client visits, no homeworkers and no overseas travel fits a packaged product. The line shifts once you employ more than fifteen to twenty staff, IT and AV spend tops £100,000, you take regular client meetings on premises, you operate from multiple sites, you have a serviced-office contract you don't fully understand, your BI exposure is meaningful, or you have hybrid workers with company kit at home. Packaged wordings then develop holes: inner limits on portable equipment, low money limits, narrow BI "damage" definitions, weak cyber and an EPL gap that gets uncomfortable as Tribunal awards climb.
That's where a broker earns the fee. We have broad market panel access including office combined wordings from Allianz, AXA, Aviva, RSA, Zurich, Travelers, Hiscox, QBE and the Lloyd's market, plus standalone cyber from Beazley, CFC, Coalition, AIG and Tokio Marine HCC. We prepare the presentation, push for the right BI indemnity period, negotiate sub-limits, and stay involved when a claim lands. For firms with PI placed elsewhere — see our PI sector index — we aim to renew the office side at a different date so renewal load is staggered.
The covers you actually need
Contents — specified items vs sum insured
Office contents covers computers, monitors, AV kit, furniture, fixtures, files and consumables against fire, theft, escape of water, malicious damage and a defined list of perils. Cheaper packaged products give a flat sum insured; better wordings split into general contents and computers/EDP (electronic data processing), with the EDP section giving specific cover for breakdown, virus and mechanical/electrical damage. If your firm runs £200,000 of IT, you want the EDP section.
For high-value laptops, AV, surveyor drones and specialist monitors we'd push for a specified items schedule above about £2,500 unit value, with the residue unspecified. Underinsurance is the most common contents claim issue; SME office sums insured have not kept pace with modern IT and furniture.
Reinstatement-of-data costs sit as a sub-limit, typically £25,000 to £100,000. That's the cost of reconstituting lost data, not cyber liability.
Buildings — owner-occupier only
If you own your floor or building, you insure it. The sum insured should be rebuilding cost (BCIS-based reinstatement including professional fees, debris removal, alternative accommodation, Local Authority requirements) — not market value. For listed buildings or unusual construction (common in central Bath, the Cotswolds and parts of Bristol) we commission a formal reinstatement-cost assessment.
If you lease, the landlord insures the building and recharges via service charge or insurance rent. Check three things in the landlord's schedule: insured perils, the excess passed back to you, and whether tenant's improvements are covered. On an FRI lease the answer to the third is almost always that you have to insure them yourself.
Business interruption — get the indemnity period right
This is where SME office wordings most often disappoint. Office BI is rated on gross profit — turnover less variable costs — including wage roll, because in a professional firm staff cost is largely fixed and you keep paying through a disruption. Packaged products default to twelve months. Twelve months is usually wrong.
If your office is fire- or flood-damaged, you'll need new premises, fit-out, IT reinstallation, BT/ISP reconnection, AV reinstall and time for staff to relocate. Eighteen months is the default we'd recommend; twenty-four where IT and AV is bespoke or location matters to client perception (a Glass Wharf firm can't reopen at a Brislington trading estate without consequences).
Additional increased cost of working (AICW) matters more for an office than physical reinstatement timing. AICW pays the extra spend to keep the firm operating: temporary space, agency cover, IT hire, courier costs, remote-working tooling. For professional firms AICW is where most of a BI claim lands.
Public liability — clients on the floor
Office PL covers third-party injury or property damage on your premises and elsewhere you operate. £2m is the legal floor for most contracts; £5m is the default we'd recommend, £10m for firms taking client meetings of scale or in shared buildings where a fire originating in your space could damage the floors above. Watch the definition of "the business" — narrow definitions exclude social events, charity days and offsite entertainment. Slip and trip claims dominate frequency.
Employers' liability — including homeworkers
EL is compulsory under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 with a £5m statutory limit; market default and our placement standard is £10m. The certificate must be displayed where employees can see it (digital display via email or intranet has counted since 2008).
Homeworkers and hybrid workers are covered under the standard EL section, but HSE guidance HSG217 extends the duty of care to the home workstation. DSE assessments are expected for regular homeworkers. We've seen claims where an employee developed a chronic shoulder condition working from a kitchen table on a company laptop; the defence was thin because no DSE assessment had been recorded.
Money, glass and legal expenses
Money covers theft of cash in transit, on premises, in safes and at directors' or employees' homes; £2,500 to £10,000 usually suffices unless you handle client float. Personal accident assault — a lump sum if an employee is assaulted during a hold-up — is worth taking.
Glass covers external and partition glazing: material at Temple Quay or Central Square, nominal in a Spike Island conversion.
Legal expenses typically covers employment tribunal defence, contract disputes, debt recovery, statutory enforcement (HMRC, ICO, HSE) and tax enquiry, with limits of £100,000 or £250,000 and an external panel. Employment Practices Liability is increasingly what earns the section its keep — Tribunal awards have risen materially, especially in discrimination cases where the uncapped element bites. At SME level EPL sits as a bolt-on within legal expenses; we'd push for at least £250,000 of Tribunal defence plus settlement and a panel solicitor your firm would actually use.
Cyber — standalone, almost always
You will be offered a cyber endorsement on the office policy. Take it. Then place standalone cyber alongside. Office-package endorsements give a low limit (£25,000 to £100,000), a generic response, weak regulatory cover and limited breach-response services. Standalone cyber from a specialist (Beazley, CFC, Coalition, AIG, Tokio Marine HCC) gives a £500,000 to £5m limit, an incident-response panel you can call at 3am on a Saturday, dedicated forensic and notification services, business interruption for system failure, and properly written ICO investigation cover. We coordinate the two so standalone responds first. See /commercial/commercial-cyber/ for the deeper standalone discussion.
Directors' and officers'
For owner-managed SME offices the D&O exposure (HMRC investigation, personal H&S liability, employment claims against named directors) is real but usually placed separately. We'll quote it alongside the office package or run a separate tower for firms with external investors or non-executive directors.
Sector-specific risks we see most
Escape of water from the floor above
By a long way the most common large property loss in office portfolios. Modern office buildings have wet sprinklers, copper plumbing of variable age, kitchenettes on every floor and toilet stacks sharing walls with server rooms. A burst on a Friday night, an unattended weekend, and by Monday morning you have soaked ceiling tiles, ruined carpet, dead UPS units and unusable workstations on three floors.
A claim we've worked through: second floor of a six-floor Bristol building, Saturday-night chilled-water failure on floor four, ingress through floors three and two, complete replacement of carpet, ceiling and a third of the IT. The landlord's policy paid for the structure; the tenants claimed on contents and BI. Those without BI swallowed three weeks of revenue loss with no AICW to fund temporary working.
Laptop and monitor theft
Portable equipment claims spike in spring and summer when offices thin out for holidays. Opportunist theft of laptops, monitors and AV: tailgated reception entry, in and out in under five minutes. Portable equipment must be specifically scheduled or covered under the EDP section for full territorial cover; the unspecified portable-equipment inner limit on packaged products is often £2,500 or £5,000, which won't replace a MacBook Pro and an external display.
Cyber — ransomware and business email compromise
Office firms are squarely in the ransomware target zone. The Lloyd's and London cyber market has hardened over the last two underwriting years, with insurers pushing MFA, endpoint detection and response, immutable backups, privileged access management and segregated admin accounts. Where these controls are in place renewals have stabilised; where they're not, cover narrows or premium climbs.
Business email compromise is the more frequent loss. A finance director receives a spoofed email from the managing partner authorising payment to a new supplier; the payment goes through; the bank can't recover the funds. Standalone cyber with social engineering cover responds; an office-package endorsement usually doesn't.
Serviced office tenants — the master policy question
If you take space at Regus, IWG, WeWork, X+Why, Spaces, Runway East, Desklodge or Engine Shed, you'll be sold a contents-only policy or told the master policy covers you. Read the operator's certificate carefully. The typical master policy covers the building and the operator's furniture, not your equipment, files or BI. Your contents policy needs to pick up the tenant's improvements you've installed (screens, AV, signage, branded fit-out), portable equipment, BI (the operator's wording typically excludes your loss of revenue), and any data exposure. PL needs to extend to your activities at the serviced address even as a flexible-desk tenant — packaged products sometimes restrict cover to "premises owned, leased or occupied", which a hot desk doesn't cleanly fit.
Tenant's improvements on FRI leases
Standard UK commercial leases are typically FRI, making the tenant liable for repair, decoration and reinstatement of improvements. Many tenants assume the landlord's policy covers their £80,000 fit-out. It doesn't. We identify the schedule and either add it to the contents declaration or take a separate section.
Slip, trip, contractor injury and HVAC
We've seen a claim from a contractor falling through a ceiling void while installing AV cabling, with the firm pulled in as occupier-liable: PL responded, but the firm hadn't issued a permit-to-work and hadn't seen the contractor's risk assessment. The occupier's duty under the Occupiers' Liability Acts 1957 and 1984 applies whether you've thought about it or not.
Modern office HVAC carries a Legionella risk if not maintained — open cooling towers, evaporative condensers and water cooling systems sit on the L8 Approved Code of Practice. For most tenants it's a landlord issue; owner-occupiers and tenants with their own boilers, cylinders and humidifiers carry a live exposure. Legionella PL claims are rare but expensive, and HSE prosecution risk is meaningful.
Bristol & South West considerations
Bristol's professional services cluster concentrates at Temple Quay, Glass Wharf, Temple Quarter and Spike Island, with the Engine Shed and Runway East hubs anchoring the fintech and consultancy end. Many of our office clients sit in glazed waterside buildings on long FRI leases with substantial fit-out, making tenant's improvements, escape of water and BI sub-limits the three renewal issues we focus on. The Floating Harbour creates a flood risk for ground-floor units in Redcliffe, the Bristol Bridge end of Welsh Back and parts of the Harbourside; we check flood mapping on new submissions in those postcodes.
Bath's professional cluster sits around Queen Square, the Royal Crescent and Pulteney, with a high proportion of listed-building tenancies where reinstatement-cost assessments and Local Authority requirements clauses matter. Cheltenham's financial services hub — anchored by the Eagle Star legacy and now centred on Endeavour House — gives us regulated-firm placements where cyber and EPL get particular attention. Cardiff's cluster around Capital Tower and Central Square has grown substantially since the BBC and HMRC moves; Newport's regeneration around Friars Walk has pulled professional tenants out of older stock.
Swindon concentrates at Symmetry Park and Windmill Hill. Yeovil's professional offices serve the Westland advanced industries engineering cluster — those firms often carry meaningful PI exposure alongside the office cover, and we coordinate the two at renewal. M4 and M5 commuting patterns drive the hybrid-working profile across the portfolio: more company kit at home, more DSE exposure, more reason to engineer EL and home-contents extensions correctly.
How to get it right at renewal
Start 60 to 90 days before renewal. Office wordings look standard but inner limits, sub-limits and exclusions differ materially between insurers, and a properly prepared submission gets better terms.
What underwriters want to see: a current contents schedule split between general contents, computers/EDP and portable equipment; floor area and occupancy; security (alarm spec, CCTV, access control, out-of-hours); construction type if owner-occupied; sprinkler confirmation; building age; a statement of homeworkers and their equipment; five-year claims experience with reserves on open claims; and a cyber controls questionnaire if standalone cyber is in scope.
Claims history is read carefully. Underwriters look at frequency more than severity — three small water-damage claims in three years tells them more than one large fire. Where open claims sit on the record, we want a current reserve view and your version of the likely settlement, because the gap is often material.
Photos help: reception, server room, kitchenette, fire escapes, alarm panel. Risk-management evidence that shifts terms includes alarm grade (NSI Gold or equivalent monitored alarm with dual-path or Red Care signalling), CCTV coverage, fire suppression where relevant, a DSE assessment programme, a written cyber security policy with named incident-response contacts, and evidence of cyber-awareness, GDPR and manual-handling training.
Our renewal timeline: T-90 strategy and data gather, T-75 submission to selected markets, T-60 first indications and negotiation, T-30 quote slate and recommendation, T-7 cover bound and certificates lodged. Our submissions go to a curated panel rather than the whole market at once, because multi-quote shopping helps when the market is genuinely competitive but hurts when underwriters realise they've all been asked.
How Apex helps
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is an independent commercial broker based in Bristol, regulated by the FCA under FRN 724952. We hold the #1 ranking in Bristol for professional indemnity insurance and have built the wider commercial estate around the same standards: broad market panel access, claims advocacy that doesn't end at policy issue, renewal preparation 60 to 90 days out, and attention to wording detail that gets lost in packaged-product transactions.
For office cover we work with the major composites, the Lloyd's office combined facilities and standalone cyber specialists, and coordinate the office programme with your existing PI placement. When a claim lands we run it from our desk: instructing loss adjusters, pushing reserves, escalating slow handlers and keeping you informed.
We sit in Bristol and place risks across the 50-mile catchment — Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Swindon, Weston-super-Mare, Yeovil, Taunton, Wells, Stroud, Chippenham, Trowbridge, Frome, Bridgwater. Speak to us about a renewal review or a new placement; we'll tell you straightforwardly where the existing programme is tight, where it's loose, and what we'd do differently.
FAQs
Do I legally need office insurance?
Employers' liability is compulsory if you have one or more employees (£5m statutory minimum; £10m market default). Other sections are not legally required, but most commercial leases require PL and contents at minimum, and many require BI.
How much does office insurance cost in the UK?
Premium is driven by staff numbers, wage roll, contents sum insured, floor area, location, claims experience, security grading and limits taken. Small offices start in the low thousands annually; a 50-staff firm with £500,000 of contents and standalone cyber will see a five-figure programme spend. We don't quote ranges without seeing the firm because the variables move premium substantially.
Can I rely on the serviced office operator's master policy?
No. The master policy typically covers the building and the operator's furniture only, not your contents, BI or data exposure. You almost always need your own contents and PL cover even as a serviced-office tenant.
What indemnity period should I take on business interruption?
18 months as the default; 24 months where location, fit-out or IT is bespoke. 12 months is rarely enough once you account for finding premises, fit-out lead times and IT reinstallation.
Should cyber sit on the office policy or be standalone?
For any firm with meaningful data or revenue exposure, standalone cyber alongside the office endorsement. Standalone gives a proper limit, specialist incident response, social engineering cover, ICO investigation cover and BI for system failure that the endorsement typically doesn't.
What about homeworkers and hybrid staff?
EL extends to home-based work and HSG217 expects DSE assessments and a workstation policy for regular homeworkers. Company kit at the employee's home needs covering under the office contents schedule or via a homeworker extension. We check this on every submission.
Does the office policy cover client equipment held on our premises?
Not by default. Property of others — client files, equipment, contractor tools — needs a specific extension, usually with a modest sub-limit. Tell us if you hold client property of value.
Who insures tenant's improvements on an FRI lease?
Almost always the tenant. The landlord's policy covers the structure as let, not your fit-out. We schedule tenant's improvements separately on the contents declaration.
Can you place office cover alongside our PI policy?
Yes, and we'd recommend it. We coordinate office cover with existing PI placements so the programme is coherent and renewal dates stagger. See our PI sector index, the solicitors' PI guide or architects' PI guide.
How long does a quote take?
24 to 72 hours for a packaged policy on a clean risk; 3 to 4 weeks for a manually rated programme with standalone cyber and a complex contents schedule.
Do you place office cover outside Bristol?
Yes. We operate across the 50-mile South West catchment — Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Swindon and the rest.
What's an EPL claim and is it covered?
Employment Practices Liability claims are employee actions for unfair dismissal, discrimination, harassment, breach of contract and similar. At SME level EPL sits as a bolt-on within legal expenses, providing Tribunal defence costs and settlement up to a limit. As awards have risen we increasingly recommend a dedicated EPL limit rather than the default.
Other sectors we cover
- Professional services office — accountants, consultants, advisory firms operating from a single or multi-site office estate
- IT services and tech firms — SaaS, IT consultancy and managed-service providers with combined PI and office exposures
- Marketing, PR and creative agencies — agencies and studios with PI, office, equipment and event exposures
Coverage area
Our office insurance practice is run from Bristol and serves the full South West catchment, placing cover for tenants and owner-occupiers from Temple Quay and Glass Wharf to Spike Island, Cabot Circus, Filton and Aztec West, with active books across Bath, Cheltenham, Cardiff and Swindon. For local context see our Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, Cardiff, Swindon and Gloucester commercial insurance pages, and the commercial insurance Bristol and South West pillar for the full programme overview.
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