The devil in the detail of business interruption insurance

"A purposive interpretation of the language of policies to supply the cover that everything indicates the customers thought that they were buying, makes much more sense than the occasionally quite negative niggling arguments presented by the insurers" [the author, below]. The High Court has given its view in FCA v Arch Insurance on a small proportion of all the wordings in business interruption policies - but years of wrangling over Covid-19-related claims could lie ahead. Adam Samuel discusses the judgment and ways forward.

Adam SamuelBA LLM DipPFS MCISI FCIArb Certs CII (MP&ER) Barrister and Attorney may be contacted atadamsamuel@aol.com.For links to where you can buy the second edition of 'Consumer Financial Services Complaints and Compensation', see www.adamsamuel.com/book.

The Financial Conduct Authority's ongoing nightmare with business interruption insurance, reflected in the High Court's 15 September decision on its test case, has its origins in a Financial Services Authority bungle in light of the Twin Towers plane crashes of 9/11. After the World Trade Centre was destroyed, nobody knew whether one of the towers was insured at all, let alone the scope of the coverage involved. It took a lawsuit to resolve. The FSA, which oversaw the defendant insurers, started its 'contract certainty' initiative in order to prevent a repetition. Unfortunately, it announced that contract certainty did not involve insurance policies actually being comprehensible to those being insured.