COVID-19: Business Interruption Insurance Claims  

As the spread of COVID-19 continues and the substantial economic losses across the economy become clearer, businesses and business owners should be looking at the insurance policies that they have in place, to assess whether or not they have coverage in relation to their actual or anticipated losses associated with the spread of the Coronavirus.

The starting point is to look at your insurance policy and check whether or not you are covered for “Business Interruption”,  as this will be the section of the policy which may respond to loss caused directly or indirectly by an insured event such as an occurrence of notifiable disease or a closure occasioned by the action taken by government in response to the COVID-19 virus.

Our lawyers can assist with insurance matters both before a dispute arises or after a dispute has arisen.

GSC can provide advice about how to notify your claim to your insurers.

Where a claim has already been declined by your insurance company, we can provide strategic advice as to the merits of challenging the insurers decision and pursuing that challenge via a dispute resolution process or if necessary, court proceeding or arbitration.

Just because your insurer or broker has indicated that your claim would be declined this does not necessarily mean this is the correct legal analysis. Furthermore, you should always take independent legal advice on matters such as this as there may be other options.

GSC Solicitors are able to assist with Business Interruption Insurance claims on behalf of a wide variety of businesses regardless of location or industry. 

In some limited circumstances, you might also have a claim against your insurance broker.

Practical Next Steps

So that we can help you navigate this process we have set out below a simple 8 step process so that we can support you at this time:

1. Make sure that you have a full copy of your Business Insurance Policy (to include Policy Schedule and policy wording – your Business Interruption cover will usually be found in the same policy as your Property Damage cover)
2. Please provide a brief summary about your business.
3. Confirm if you have made a claim which has either been rejected or is yet to be responded to by your insurers (provide details).
4. Confirm your insurance broker’s contact details.
5. Send your information to [email protected]
6. You will then receive an email confirming that we have received your initial information.
7. Once we have received your information, we will review it. We will always be honest with you and if it appears that a claim on your policy is unlikely to have merit, we will endeavour to indicate this straight away (at no charge to you).
8. If, following on our initial review it appears that your claim may have merit, we will also indicate this in an initial short email and briefly set out the elements that support this. In that email we will indicate the fixed fee for us to prepare a more detailed analysis and strategic advice. In some instance you may need help drafting the notification to your insurers we also will indicate the cost of this if applicable.

For any inquires please do not hesitate to contact our dedicated team on [email protected] or  Michael Shapiro on [email protected] or 0207 822 2246 or Hateem Ali on [email protected] or 0207 822 2209.