Is it time to revisit your COVID-19 insurance claim?

Having assisted many businesses in quantifying and submitting their COVID-19 business interruption (BI) claims, we can sympathise with their pain and frustration when insurers have declined payouts based upon nuances in the wording of insurance agreement clauses. One clause encountered (albeit inconsistently applied from insurer to insurer), was when a business was only covered if they could provide evidence that they had an outbreak of COVID-19 at their business premises, known as an “ATP Clause”. This proved difficult as when businesses were forced to close in March 2020, they may not have had a confirmed case of COVID‑19, particularly given the limited testing regime in place at that time.

However, many BI claims previously declined due to ATP Clauses, can now be revisited thanks to a landmark judgment on 16 June 2023, in a claim lead by London International Exhibition Centre, which incorporated six test cases. Mr Justice Jacobs was asked to consider whether the causation rulings in a November 2020 High Court FCA test case for COVID-19 BI claims involving a “Radius Clause” (i.e., COVID‑19 within the vicinity of the business premises) also applied to BI claims involving an ATP Clause. He concluded that the same causation rulings applied and in more good news, Mr Justice Jacobs ruled that there did not need to be a diagnosis of COVID‑19 at the business premises for an ATP Clause to be valid.

How we can help

Our Forensic Services team are well versed in assisting businesses with the quantification and submission of BI claims, including providing reports for insurers evidencing and justifying such claims. If you have a previously declined COVID-19 BI claim, or indeed a BI claim in another context, we would be delighted to assist you.

If you require assistance in this area or want further information as to how we can help you, please contact Martin Chapman.

Also, if you would like to explore the sorts of challenges we tackle in a wider BI context, please take a few minutes to read our recent article, Business interruption: The challenges of quantification.