As previously reported in this blog, the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) brought a case against a variety of insurers under 21 policy wordings seeking clarification of sample clauses because the carriers refused to pay any U.K. claims relating to COVID-19 business interruptions largely for hospitality businesses. The policyholders seem to have won most of the coverage issues, and indeed the carriers have announced that they would book significant losses.

The basic issues involved the coverage for a series of extensions (specified loss clauses) to basic Business Interruption (BI) coverage, which covered the closure of a business due to an order of a competent governmental authority based on the existence of a notifiable disease in the vicinity of the covered business. These extensions have relatively low limits under $50,000. Given these low limits, it was financially impracticable for individual policyholders in the United Kingdom to separately litigate their claims against their insurers. As such, the insurers appeared to be denying claims on the assumption that most policyholders would not be in a financial position to press their claims. The recent decision in the case brought by the FCA will now allow tens of thousands of U.K. small-business policyholders an affordable path to coverage.…

Continue Reading FCA Case Provides a Win for Policyholders and Vindicates the Concept of Expedited Generalized Rulings for Small Businesses

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of businesses of all sizes have been forced to file lawsuits against their property insurers for failing to honor their contractual obligations to provide business interruption, extra expense, civil authority, and other coverage for the substantial losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, this onslaught of litigation …