Unless insurers and the FCA agree a settlement before hand the business Interruption (BI) claims test case will be heard at the Supreme Court towards the end of 2020.
Insurers may be faced with the challenge of quickly dealing with the business interruption claims currently lodged with them.
QIC, which used the same policy wording as RSA, has a potential liability of £114m according to The Insurance Times. It naturally wanted to be able to appeal itself but has been refused permission to do so by the High Court.
Should the Supreme Court uphold the decision of the High Court, which found against the majority of the eight insurers taking part in the test case, insurers can expect great pressure to settle these cases fast.
Even if the Supreme Court amends or reverses the decision insurers will need to show they evaluated each claim fairly.
Some insurers have anticipated that and licensed a custom BI Claims Management platform from 360Globalnet.
In practise this custom solution was configured very quickly as 360SiteView is one of the next-gen claims management platforms that do not involve the lengthy, expensive and slow time to value caused by the necessity of coding and scripting of traditional claims management software.
Something to bear in mind if you have a £100million or more of BI claims on the books.
“Insurers’ approach in first seeking, and now obtaining, leapfrog certificates shows the lengths that they will go to to delay and defer decisions on paying out claims. Whatever happens after [the] hearing, policyholders should be under no illusions that recovery of claim proceeds will be easy. It is only by joining a well-resourced and properly funded group, that they can safely do that. “Whilst resilience policyholders will naturally be disappointed after[the] hearing, as we anticipated, despite losing on all grounds at first instance, RSA intends to continue to fight on all fronts as hard as it can to try to reverse the High Court’s judgment on RSA4. With an appeal to the Supreme Court now firmly on the cards, individual resilience policyholders will find it more difficult to obtain payment from their insurers any time soon.”
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