Consequential loss · gross profit basis
A fire policy rebuilds the shed. It does nothing about the twelve months of lost profit while the shed is being rebuilt. Business interruption cover fills that gap, and this sizes it on the gross profit basis used across the Indian market.
Take annual gross profit on the insurance definition, scale it to the length of the indemnity period, then add an uplift for whatever growth you expect over the policy year. Twelve months of gross profit with a twelve-month indemnity period and ten per cent growth gives a sum insured ten per cent above last year's gross profit.
The uplift matters because the policy runs forward, not backward. You are insuring the profit you will earn over the coming year, and a business growing at twenty per cent that insures last year's figure is under-insured from the day the policy incepts.
This is the mistake that costs the most. Accounting gross profit is turnover less cost of goods sold. Insurance gross profit is turnover less specified variable costs, and only those costs that genuinely fall away when production stops.
Costs that continue during a shutdown belong inside the insured figure, because you will still be paying them with no revenue coming in. Salaries you intend to keep paying, rent, interest, statutory dues, security and maintenance all continue. Insuring the accounting figure typically leaves the sum insured well short, and the average clause applies to business interruption exactly as it does to fire.
Get the definition from the policy wording, not from your ledger, and reconcile the two before you set the figure.
The indemnity period is how long the policy will keep paying, and twelve months is chosen by default far more often than it is chosen deliberately. Ask what a total loss would really involve at your site.
Clearing debris and settling the claim takes time. So does pollution board and municipal approval for a rebuild. Imported machinery has a lead time measured in months and a commissioning period after that. Then customers who moved to another supplier have to be won back, which is the part nobody counts.
For a specialised plant in a Rajasthan industrial area with imported equipment, eighteen to twenty-four months is often realistic and twelve is optimistic. The extra premium for the longer period is small; the cost of running out of cover at month thirteen is the business.
Business interruption is not standalone cover. It attaches to the material damage policy and responds only when there has been damage that policy admits. A fire, a flood, a machinery breakdown under an extension: the physical loss must be covered first.
That link is worth checking. If the material damage claim is reduced by under-insurance, the business interruption claim behind it is affected too. The two sums insured need to be reviewed together, which is why we never look at one without the other.
Turnover less specified variable costs, being only the costs that stop when production stops. It is usually higher than accounting gross profit, because costs that continue during a shutdown, such as salaries you keep paying, rent and interest, stay inside the insured figure.
As long as full recovery actually takes: debris removal, claim settlement, statutory approvals, machinery lead time, commissioning and winning back customers. For plants with imported machinery, eighteen to twenty-four months is common. Twelve months is a default, not an assessment.
Not under a standard policy. The cover follows the material damage policy and needs an admitted physical loss to trigger. Extensions exist for supplier and customer premises, denial of access and utility failure, and each has to be added and priced deliberately.
Yes. If the sum insured is less than the gross profit at risk, the claim is reduced in proportion, in the same way as a fire claim. This is why the growth uplift is not optional.
Increased cost of working covers the extra expense of keeping going, such as renting a temporary shed or outsourcing production, and is normally included alongside gross profit rather than instead of it. A standalone increased-cost-of-working policy suits businesses that can trade through disruption, not those that stop.
Related: Business interruption risk · Sum insured calculator · Fire and burglary insurance