Cov RFC insurance petition (1 Viewer)

Just had a lengthy “Webinar” on this issue at work. Whether the claims are covered will naturally turn on the policy wording. Looks like the majority of policies will exclude BI in absence of “damage” but there are several poorly worded policies that have some underwriters panicking.

No insurer can retrospectively introduce exclusions to existing policies but you won’t be surprised that losses arising from “pandemics” will be universally excluded now as standard.

The problem with this is that most policies will cover denial of access up to about £25k for a notifiable disease (there is a Govt list of notifiable diseases). Well Covid 19 wasn't heard of until a few months ago so most wont have it written into their policy purely because of that. Others that have already written in will cover the denial of access as long as there is an outbreak at the premises so if you have a policy that does cover it you're ok as long as someone there has caught it.

I believe if the policy specifies a “notifiable” disease it will respond to COVID-19 as the Govt. have put it on the list. Subject to it not being kicked out elsewhere, which is likely. But if it’s worded “specified” disease then that disease needs to be listed in the policy, which this one won’t be for obvious reasons.

And disease cover at all is an extension to the basic BI insurance which most SME’s have probably not got included in their all risks policies.

The gist of the information we got is that it will be the few that have cover and not the many.