Insurance Implications – Covid-19

Insurance Implications – Covid-19

Insurance implications

Here’s a brief overview of what we understand to be the key issues with business insurances currently. We are yet to receive specific guidance from insurers as they are busy dealing with their own internal adjustments.  

Professional Indemnity issues:

• Workforce fragmentation from mass homeworking could make it more challenging to oversee compliance and quality and some systems may need refinement to avoid reducing standards.
• Remote working will increase the opportunities for cyber criminals and constant vigilance is needed. The National Cyber Security Centre has issued an alert on the increase in phishing attacks.
• If you have Cyber insurance, make sure you have the contact details for the Cyber Incident Response Team in your Business Continuity plan.

Office insurance – Remote working may affect several areas of a typical Office policy.

• Property – check that your policy provides cover on IT equipment used at the residence of homeworkers.
• Business interruption (BI) – many policies on the surface provide cover for the financial disruption arising from Infectious Diseases. However, most policies require that someone at your premises is actually diagnosed with the disease and testing is not currently widespread. As a new virus, Covid19 is not on the lists of specified threats Insurers considered when creating their products. BI is unlikely to provide recompense for the reduction in income or any additional costs of changes in working practices.
• Employers Liability – most businesses have now instructed staff not to attend external meetings or corporate entertainment. A health & safety questionnaire may be useful in creating an audit trail to show that employers have adopted reasonable measure to ensure staff safety while working from the home environment.

Events

If you run corporate events, you may have arranged Event Cancellation cover. In the past cover has been available for cancellation costs due to Communicable Diseases so you may be protected.

If you haven’t arranged Communicable Disease cover in the past, Insurers are unlikely to offer this extension in the near future.

CFC advice on working remotely

Latest ICO guidance

It’s good to see that the ICO are taking a common-sense approach to data protection, recognising that businesses have many differing priorities short term.