Business Insurance

nghth04

Hello,
I am posting this on behalf of my Father who owns an MOT station and separate vehicle repair and services garage.
He has closed the doors to his business as it was costing more to keep the doors open with no customers coming in and also with the government giving 6 month extension on MOT's he wasn't getting any of them in either. He has 2 staff members plus himself, one of which was displaying symptoms so the decision was made to shut the doors and all self isolate.
He has business insurance for Motor trade and under his policy it says he is insured for "Business interruption" covering loss of "MOT" and "Notifiable disease at premises".
He has called his insurance company yesterday to file a claim and as been told that he is not covered for either under the current situation of Covid-19 as they don't have Covid-19 written into the policy wording. They have the following diseases in their policy wording:

Notifiable Disease

The occurrence of any of the following human infectious or human

contagious diseases sustained by any person:

Acute Encephalitis, Acute Poliomyelitis, Anthrax, Chickenpox,

Cholera, Diphtheria, Dysentery, Legionellosis, Legionnaires Disease,

Leprosy, Leptospirosis, Malaria, Measles, Meningococcal Infection,

Mumps, Opthalmia Neonatorum, Paratyphoid Fever, Plague, Rabies,

Rubella, Scarlet Fever, Smallpox, Tetanus, Tuberculosis, Typhoid

Fever, Viral Hepatitis, Whooping Cough, Yellow Fever.

You will notice they have Plague written in the policy wording and when we have looked up the definition of a plague it says the following in the dictionary
"an epidemic disease that causes high mortality; pestilence."
Does Covid-19 not constitute as a plague?
With the business interruption and loss of MOT they said there would need to be damage to the premises for a claim to be submitted.
So my Father pays £4,000 a year for business insurance that he is unable to make a claim from during this unprecedented time. 
Is this the case with all business insurance?
Thank you in advance for any replies to this thread.

Sunshine158

Hi, I wonder if you got anywhere with your issue above.  I have the same.

Jeremy535897

Plague is caused by bacteria, not by a virus. The cover of loss of MOT will be set out in the policy. It seems that the policy deals with physical damage to the premises.

Not all business insurance will be the same. Claims depend on the wording of the insurance contract. Unexpected things like coronavirus are often not covered.

Grumpy_chap

Hello, I am using my recollection of news articles (probably BBC online) here, so likely potential for error or incorrect details.
However, I am sure I read towards the beginning of this whole episode that the Government were adding coronavirus COVID-19 to the list of notifiable diseases.
It is possible that the list in the insurance documents exactly matches a previously published Government list.  If that is the case AND the Government list has been updated to add coronavirus, then that might give a case for challenging the insurer's position.
Sorry, that is nothing definite, but possibly a route to look down and investigate further.
Has you father explored and claimed and of the other forms of support that have been made available because of coronavirus?

Jeremy535897

Grumpy_chap said:

Hello, I am using my recollection of news articles (probably BBC online) here, so likely potential for error or incorrect details.
However, I am sure I read towards the beginning of this whole episode that the Government were adding coronavirus COVID-19 to the list of notifiable diseases.
It is possible that the list in the insurance documents exactly matches a previously published Government list.  If that is the case AND the Government list has been updated to add coronavirus, then that might give a case for challenging the insurer's position.
Sorry, that is nothing definite, but possibly a route to look down and investigate further.
Has you father explored and claimed and of the other forms of support that have been made available because of coronavirus?

Interesting thought, but the fact that it lists diseases rather than just saying "any disease described by government as notifiable at the date of claim" suggests this is a long shot.

hb2

There are 33 conditions (including COVID 19) currently listed as notifiable and only 28 on the insurance co's list, so I suspect they would try to argue that they do not intend to cover all notifiable diseases. I think a lot of people (including travellers) are finding that their insurance policies have notable exceptions!

Jeremy535897

Yes, you need to look at the clauses that require the definition "notifiable disease" in the contract.