Business interruption Insurance

gerr

Member
Location
Mid Wales
Following the ruling made last week by the Supreme Court that insurers are liable to payout I called my local NFU office. I was told that NFU isn't affected by this ruling and they will not be paying out. What is everyone else hearing?
 

idgni

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Armagh
My understanding of it is that The NFU weren’t paying as their policy never stated “Pandemic” or “Covid” .
That’s what that told me when I enquired for my other business I have with them.
The ones in the court case had “pandemic” on their policy wording, but weren’t paying out as they said it was only meant to cover a short term pandemic and not a long term one like the Covid one has become
 

Clive

Staff Member
Moderator
Location
Lichfield
Following the ruling made last week by the Supreme Court that insurers are liable to payout I called my local NFU office. I was told that NFU isn't affected by this ruling and they will not be paying out. What is everyone else hearing?


@Nigel Wellings would be interested to hear implications for any farm businesses (especially those with effected diversification) ?
 

Nigel Wellings

Member
I have been keeping a close eye on the court case. Acres obviously have a number of clients with diversification businesses that have been badly hit. I have provided advice to both our own clients and others Insured with NFU. My advice is very much given from representing the client, I do not represent the Insurance Companies.
Business Interruption (BI) cover is designed to pay for consequential losses following physical damage by an insured event such as fire,impact, storm, theft etc. Example; grain drier burns down and damages grain store; policy pays costs of alternative grain drying, haulage and storage whilst also paying to replace damaged Drier, Store etc.
Most BI policies then have some minor extensions to them that in my Insurance career I have rarely if ever seen a claim on. Of these extensions there are 2 that the majority of farm/farm diversification policies have. One covers closure of the premises due to a list of human notifiable diseases BUT the list of diseases does not include COVID or SARS, the other covers prevention of Access to the premises BUT has to be caused by damage to property in the vicinity of the premises by an event such as fire, storm etc.
Cover was obviously not in place for the above 2 circumstances and so these type of policies (such as NFU Farm Select and the whole of the Broker Market) were not even involved in the Court Case. That is why NFUM are saying quite rightly the court case does not affect them.
The Court case was about a sample of other commercial insurance policies from a number of Insurers, where the wording was different and it did not for instance specify a list of Diseases. The cover may therefore have said; closure of the premises due to human notifiable disease. It was argued that in these sort of cases Insurers had (maybe inadvertently) provided cover. Insurers tried to wriggle and Court has said Pay up.
My guess (and this is only an educated guess) is that are only a very limited number of policyholders out there with such cover- maybe only 1-5% of the market and that the majority of those with cover will find it quite limited. In my opinion this Court case has been blown out of proportion by the media and the way they are reporting it is very misleading. You were think the floodgates were being opened to thousands of large claims- I very much doubt this!
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Following the ruling made last week by the Supreme Court that insurers are liable to payout I called my local NFU office. I was told that NFU isn't affected by this ruling and they will not be paying out. What is everyone else hearing?

Take legal advice. A mate of mine with business interruption cover from NFUM is also not getting any joy.

The devil is in the detail of your policy wording.
 

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