News

We recognise that the judgement of the Supreme Court in the Test Case represents an important milestone in the context of the interpretation of some of the common business interruption wordings in the market. The FCA Test Case and the Supreme Court focused on policy wordings within the following three categories:

1. Interruption caused by an outbreak of a Notifiable Disease.

The Test Case has determined that the cover for disease provided by our wordings such as Retail Catering, Trader Commercial Combined, Office and Property Owners, will not provide cover as these wordings specifically list the diseases for which cover is included and Covid-19 is not in the list.  

2. Interruption caused by Prevention of Access.

The Test Case focused on types of policies where cover was provided for business interruption arising from “prevention of access” to an insured premises where there was no damage to nearby property(ies).  Our Retail Catering, Trader Commercial Combined, Office and Property Owners wordings do not have such extensions so there is no cover for non damage prevention of access, as damage to the premises is required for cover to apply.  

3. Interruption caused by policy provisions which are engaged by restrictions imposed on the premises in relation to a notifiable disease (a mixture of the above two).

As outlined above, our Retail Catering, Trader Commercial Combined, Office and Property Owners wordings will not provide cover for diseases that are not specifically listed, nor restriction or prevention of access to premises that is not precipitated by damage to property and therefore no cover is afforded in respect of the Covid-19 pandemic.  

In summary, the  Supreme Court decision has no direct impact or relevance to policyholders who are insured on our Retail Catering, Property Owners, Office, Trader policy wordings.

We deeply sympathise with all those that have been affected by this unprecedented situation where our issued policies do not provide cover for the same.

For more detailed information on the Appeal case please refer to the FCA website:

https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/supreme-court-judgment-business-interruption-insurance-test-case