Part of Simplified Language Commercial Lines Program

Summary: Insurance Services Office (ISO) released a simplified language commercial property program in 1986. It was designed to replace the older versions of property forms, rates, rules, and classifications from the commercial fire and commercial multi-peril programs. The latest revision of the program is was made in October 2012.

This discussion provides a simple overview of the 2012 edition of the commercial property program. Other discussions within this section contain in-depth treatments of each of its composite parts and/or issues arising under the policies.

Topics covered: Property coverage forms Commercial property coverage part

Property Coverage Forms

The principal form for providing coverage for buildings and personal property exposures in the commercial property program is Building and Personal Property Coverage Form, CP 00 10 10 12. With the exception of builders risk or commercial condominium exposures, for which there are separate coverage forms under the program, virtually all types of commercial property are eligible to use the Building and Personal Property Coverage Form.

Coverage for other exposures such as legal liability, value reporting, mortgageholder's errors and omissions, tobacco sales warehouses, and leasehold interest are available through separate coverage forms under the commercial property program.

Business income exposures are handled through two basic coverage forms, one that includes extra expense coverage and one that does not. Discussions of business income forms and endorsements may be found under a separate section of the FC&S.

Commercial Property Coverage Part

With one exception, the commercial property program operates under the same modular format as the other ISO commercial lines programs in that a coverage form must be combined with a declarations, an appropriate causes of loss form (basic, broad, or special), two conditions forms (commercial property and common policy) and any desired endorsements, in order to produce a coverage part. A commercial property coverage part may be used as a monoline policy or combined with other commercial lines coverage parts to form a commercial package policy; see Commercial Package Policy.

The one exception to the modular format in the commercial property program is standard property policy CP 00 99 10 12. See Standard Property Policy. It is a self-contained unit that includes causes of loss and applicable conditions and is used for insuring risks for which the coverage under the other forms of the program is too broad.