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Business personal property (BPP)

What is business personal property (BPP)?

Business personal property is the contents a business owns and uses rather than the building itself: machinery, equipment, electronics, furniture, fixtures, tools, stock and supplies. On a commercial property policy it is insured separately from the structure, which is why an accurate contents inventory decides how much of the loss is actually recovered.

In practice the BPP line is where a commercial claim is won or lost. A building is measured by a contractor against a scope; contents are measured only by someone who counted them. On a manufacturing loss that means CNC machines, presses and tooling; in retail it is saleable stock, refrigeration and point-of-sale hardware; in a restaurant it is the cook line, walk-in contents and the smallwares nobody counts from memory.

Policies insure BPP separately from the structure and frequently apply sub-limits to particular categories, so what is recorded and how it is described changes the recovery. See BPP inventory and on-site inspections.

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