Glass is the most fragile asset on any site – and modern offices and shops use more and more of it. Glass breakage is typically an add-on cover, and its scope and limit vary meaningfully from quote to quote.
- Glass breakage is typically a separate cover element – it isn't automatically part of every package.
- The questions: which panes of glass (shopfront, partition, skylight), up to what limit, with what deductible.
- For a leased shop, it needs clarifying whether the shopfront glazing falls under the landlord's or the tenant's cover.
What does glass cover extend to?
Glass breakage insurance settles breakage of the building's structural glass – shop windows, shopfront glazing, windows, glass walls, skylights – typically regardless of the cause of the break. The question is the scope and the limit: does it include the interior glass wall, the shower cubicle in the staff washroom, the glass counter top, the illuminated sign? Policy wordings differ on these details – when comparing offers, we line these up side by side.
Typical cases for shops and offices
A reversing car backing into a shop window, a ball through the shopfront, vandalism, a door blown open in a storm – glass damage is rarely a large sum, but it's always urgent: an open shopfront can't be left without glazing overnight. The cost of a temporary seal (boarding up) and the question of emergency glazing are part of the claim; in cases of malicious damage, the story can also overlap with burglary cover – see burglary.
Leased premises: whose glass is it?
In a leased shop, glass is a typical grey-area question: the building's shopfront glazing may fall under the owner's building insurance, but the lease often places the cost of replacement on the tenant. The right answer is to align the two policies: who takes out glass breakage cover, and for which panes. More on this dividing line: owned or leased property.
A five-minute glass inventory before you take out cover – how many square metres, what type, which pane is the most expensive – helps you set the limit accurately.
Glass cover is a typical limit-based product: it applies not to the full sum insured but to an amount set per pane or per claim. The replacement cost of special glass – curved shopfront glazing, security film, structures built together with electric shading – can be surprisingly high; if any of this is on your premises, it's worth setting the limit to match it, rather than the default.
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