By John Miklus, President, American Institute of Marine Underwriters (AIMU)
While it’s not a panacea, a vaccine for COVID-19 is expected to go a long way toward reducing the number of cases and slowing transmission of the virus. Development and testing is moving at a frenetic pace, meaning that in the not too distant future a fully-approved vaccine will need to be shipped in unprecedented volumes.
Experts predict it will take anywhere from 8,000 to 15,000 fully loaded flights to transport 20 billion doses around the world. While air is often the preferred method for shipping pharmaceuticals because of time sensitivity, it’s likely that large ocean transport companies will take on some of the load.
Once a COVID-19 vaccine is approved and manufactured, cargo insurance will be imperative to ensure speedy and safe distribution. Insurance coverage for pharma products, which encompass vaccines, is widely available and written by a number of AIMU’s member companies.
When one considers the infrastructure required to ship billions of doses from manufacturing facilities to hospitals and clinics around the world, this could be one of the biggest logistical challenges in modern history. Pharma shipments such as vaccines present a number of unique underwriting challenges, including:
High valuations: According to one industry analyst, the market for COVID vaccines is estimated at $100 billion, with $40 billion in profits. Shipping companies will handle a lot of valuable inventory and pharmaceutical companies have a lot at stake. A single shipment could be valued into the millions of dollars.
Time and temperature sensitivities: Vaccines currently under development require precise handling. Some need to be stored at temperatures as low as -80C (-112F), which will require special refrigerated containers, along with rigorous temperature monitoring and quality control.
Careful packaging and handling requirements: The vaccine will require special packaging such as cold-resistant vials and boxes to hold multiple vials. Dry ice may be required, along with syringes and protective equipment for healthcare workers administering the vaccine. Besides pharmas, the vendors who supply these products will also have skin in the game.
High theft exposure: Pharma companies plan to use everything from GPS to track their product to fake shipments to confuse criminals. One glassmaker plans to use black-light verification to prevent counterfeiting. Since the start of the pandemic, tests, masks and other gear have gone missing, so it’s not a stretch to think professional thieves and cargo theft gangs will want to get their hands on a precious and valuable vaccine.
The involvement of experienced loss prevention experts is vital to provide advice on proper packaging, proper handling and storage, setting standards and procedures for transportation providers, and recommending security measures to ensure safe delivery. AIMU member companies believe in the old saying that the best loss scenario is preventing one from ever occurring.
A North Carolina court has ruled that Cincinnati Insurance Co. must pay 16 restaurants’ claims for business income (interruption) losses due to government-ordered COVID-19 shutdowns – a decision that runs counter to those of most judges who’ve ruled on similar cases.
As hundreds of COVID-19-related lawsuits regarding business interruption coverage make their way through U.S. courts, judge after judge has found in favor of insurer defendants. The central point has been that coverage depends – as specified in the insurance policies – on the policyholder suffering a “direct physical loss.”
“Business income (interruption) policies generally reimburse a business owner for lost profits and continuing fixed expenses when its facilities are closed due to direct physical damage from a covered loss, such as a fire, a riot, or a windstorm,” said Triple-I CEO Sean Kevelighan. “Insurers have been prevailing nationwide in nearly all of the litigated COVID-19 BI lawsuits because, as North Carolina’s Insurance Commissioner has noted, ‘Standard business interruption policies are not designed to provide coverage for viruses, diseases, or pandemic-related losses because of the magnitude of the potential losses.’ ”
“Policy language controls whether COVID-19 interruptions are covered,” said Michael Menapace, a professor of insurance law at Quinnipiac University School of Law and a Triple-I Non-Resident Scholar. “The threshold issue will be whether the insureds can prove their business losses are caused by ‘physical damage to property’.”
Cincinnati Insurance has said it plans to appeal the ruling.
Future of American Insurance and Reinsurance (FAIR) has released a new interactive tool to help showcase the need for a federal solution to pandemic relief. The Business Interruption Insurance “explainer” utilizes digital storytelling techniques to help clarify information about this complex topic.
The digital explainer complements the FAIR campaign’s other recently-released digital assets, including a video overview of BI and pandemics, and a primer deck that provides quantitative backing to the assertion that pandemics cannot be privately insured.
As trial attorneys attempt to retroactively force uninsurable pandemic coverage in business interruption insurance contracts, this tool is designed to show what business interruption insurance covers, how surplus helps pay for covered perils such as hurricanes and wildfires, how insurers have stepped up to help policyholders, and the need for a federal solution to the pandemic.
ABOUT FAIR FAIR is an initiative of the Insurance Information Institute and its member companies whose mission is to ensure fairness for all customers and safeguard the industry’s longstanding role as a pillar of economic growth and stability.
Commercial insurance loss estimates related to the COVID-19 pandemic vary widely, with Lloyd’s estimating global claims as high as $107 billion in 2020 and analysts from investment bank Berenberg projecting total claims between $50 billion and $70 billion.
But a new Allianz paper says the unprecedented size of pandemic-related claims is only part of the story. The paper discusses the changes in loss patterns and causes spurred by the pandemic that “may be the prologue to more far-reaching and disruptive changes in years to come.”
Shifting exposures
The pandemic has reduced risk in some areas while heightening it in others. The paper points to “material reductions [in claims] in some lines of property and liability insurance, most notably in the aviation sector.”
Reliance on technology and the shift to homeworking for staff and remote monitoring of industrial facilities make companies more vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Reduced air travel and increased emphasis on hygiene standards could benefit the risk profile of many industries, while changes in production line processes to facilitate social distancing could increase error rates.
According to Allianz, the cost of business interruption not related to COVID-19 fell in many cases as many manufacturers, their customers, and their suppliers either shut down or scaled back operations. On the other hand, COVID-19 containment measures have led to longer disruptions and more costly claims in some cases.
“For example, a fire at a chemical plant in South Korea forced the closure of the facility,” Allianz reports. “Restricted access due to the coronavirus lockdown prolonged the reinstatement period, increasing the overall cost of the standstill.”
The hibernation of some industries, such as aviation, doesn’t mean all loss exposures have equally disappeared, Allianz says. They’ve just changed, creating new risk accumulations: “For example, large parts of the worldwide fleet are grounded in airports, many of which might be exposed to hurricanes, tornados, or hailstorms. The risk of shunting or ground incidents, when large aircraft fleets are parked temporarily, also increases and can result in costly claims.”
Business resumption brings its own risks. Opening factories and restarting production lines are high-stress situations that can involve machinery breakdowns and fires.
Eye on supply chains
Allianz points to “the current rethinking and de-risking of global supply chains to achieve more operational resilience” as a trend to watch.
“Many companies are reviewing their supply chain strategies and evaluating options such as parallel supply chains with more redundancies or some reshoring from low-cost countries back to more developed markets,” Allianz says. “This will have an important impact for insurers, both in terms of generating demand for new protection solutions, as well as new claims scenarios.”
Potential also exists for claims to materialize from long-tail lines, such as directors and officers (D&O) or professional liability, as well as workers’ compensation, if any negligence or failures to adequately protect against the coronavirus outbreak have been perceived.
On September 29, the American Action Forum (AAF) hosted an event convening experts to discuss the urgency of government-backed financial relief for businesses whose incomes have suffered under the coronavirus pandemic conditions and what challenges lie ahead.
Entitled “Assessing Financial Support for Businesses During the Pandemic,” the discussion was centered on the following key topics:
The impact and success of the Paycheck Protection Program and the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending programs, particularly the Main Street Lending Program
Pandemic business interruption insurance and the potential for a federal pandemic program
Protecting businesses from shouldering excessive costs due to the new field of coronavirus litigation
Among the event participants was Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) CEO Sean Kevelighan. In a discussion with AAF’s Director of Financial Services Policy Thomas Wade, Kevelighan provided an overview of the business interruption (BI) insurance landscape in the context of the pandemic. Key highlights included:
Global pandemics are largely uninsurable. “Compared to other covered catastrophes—hurricanes, wildfires, vandalism from civil unrest—a pandemic is not limited to time or geography. What we’re seeing now with COVID-19 is impacting every community, every economy, and all at the same time. And with this, from an industry that relies on the law of large numbers, you simply can’t price risk in a way that would be efficient.”
Standard business interruption (BI) insurance necessitates direct physical damage. “Beyond the enormity of a pandemic catastrophe, a virus does not cause direct physical damage, which is nearly always needed to trigger a property insurance policy, particularly for businesses insurance and business interruption insurance policies.”
The lack of a federal system to provide the critical financial relief businesses has created an opportunity for trial attorneys to capitalize on business owners’ desperation. “Sensing [business owners’] desperation, trial attorneys have unfortunately dusted off their playbooks and seized on the opportunity. They’re selling a false sense of hope to consumers; they’re filling court houses with litigation that is attempting to retroactively rewrite contracts by manipulation of language and interpretations.”
As insurers work to meet promises for policyholders facing covered events such as wildfires, forcing insurers to retroactively cover pandemic-related losses is detrimental to the insurance industry—a backbone of the economy. “The insurance industry is concerned about these misguided and costly attempts—mainly by trial attorneys—to take capital away that we’ve set aside for claims that are actively being paid right now as we are in the midst of extreme seasons of hurricanes and wildfires. We’ve also seen incidents of rioting and civil unrest. To be clear, our own economic analysis at Triple-I shows that any attempt to retroactively pay business interruption claims would put systemic strain on the insurance industry. Notably, this industry was one of the financial services industries that weathered our previous recession well because of how safely we manage our capital. But in this case, it would only take a matter of months to bankrupt the industry.”
More about this discussion and the broader state-of-play for business relief is available from a companion report released by Thomas Wade. For more information on the ongoing business interruption debate, visit fairinsure.org
The U.K. High Court last week issued a ruling involving business-interruption claims against policies issued by eight insurers. Jason Schupp of the Centers for Better Insurance says the ruling is a “mixed bag” for U.K. insurers and policyholders and has little relevance for their U.S. counterparts.
In the U.K. case, Schupp writes, “the fundamental theme running through the insurers’ defense was that the policies only covered localized outbreaks, not global pandemics.”
“More to the point for U.S. property/casualty insurers,” says Michael Menapace, a professor of insurance law at Quinnipiac University School of Law and a Triple-I non-resident scholar, the U.K. case involved disease coverage – “an affirmative coverage not included in most U.S. commercial property policies.”
U.S. business interruption disputes so far have turned on two key policy features:
U.S. business-interruption coverage almost always requires property damage to trigger a payout.
Nearly all U.S. COVID-19-related court cases have involved policies that specifically exclude viruses.
“The U.K. court did not address either the question of property damage or the applicability of a virus exclusion,” Schupp writes.
As Menapace put it in a recent blog post about U.S. business-interruption cases, “Policy language controls whether COVID-19 interruptions are covered…. The threshold issue [for U.S. insurers] will be whether the insureds can prove their business losses are caused by ‘physical damage to property’.”
September is National Preparedness Month, and this years’ theme of “Disasters Don’t Wait. Make Your Plan Today” could not be more timely as many areas of the country experience record-breaking wildfires and storms.
The webinar showcased two small businesses’ stories of preparation and recovery from disaster. The webinar also covered small business loans that are available after a disaster, tools are available to help businesses prepare, and what you need to know about insurance coverage.
Alex Contreras, Director of the Office of Preparedness, Communication and Coordination in the SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance (ODA), was the first speaker. The SBA offers low-interest disaster loans to businesses of all sizes, as well as to homeowners and renters. These loans are the primary source of federal assistance to help private property owners pay for disaster losses not covered by insurance. Borrowers are required to obtain and maintain appropriate insurance as a condition of most loans.
The SBA can also fund disaster mitigation efforts, such as installing fire-rated roofs, elevating structures to protect from flooding or relocating out of flood zones.
Janice Jucker, co-owner at Three Brothers Bakery in Houston, TX is the 2018 Phoenix Award Winner for Outstanding Small Business Disaster Recovery. After Hurricane Harvey, the bakery had five feet of water. Thanks to a business recovery plan, the business was fully operational after six weeks.
According to Jucker, part of an effective recovery plan is building a recovery team that includes a restoration company (find one now, don’t wait) an accountant, a contractor, an SBA loan officer and an insurance agent. Another important recovery team member is your local lawmaker – know who they are and make sure they know you, regardless of whether you agree with their politics. They can play a key part in making sure you get what you need to recover from a disaster.
Gail Moraton, business resiliency manager at IBHS, talked about the free business continuity planning tool called OFB-EZ (Open for Business E-Z) available from the IBHS. The first step to planning is to know your risk – both the likelihood of each type of disaster for your location and the amount of damage it could cause your business. Another step is having an up-to-date list of all your employees, vendors and other important contacts. A training exercise is also included with the planning tool.
Alison Bishop, internal operations manager at Spry Health Inc., talked about her company’s use of OFB-EZ. “It takes an overwhelming concept and makes it accessible and achievable,” she said.
Loretta Worters – vice president, media relations at Triple-I, went over different business insurance coverages that are available and pointed out that having the right coverage is a crucial part of disaster recovery, as well as an essential element of an overall business plan.
Like the other speakers, Ms. Worters said having a thorough inventory of all your business assets is of paramount importance. She listed different types of business policies that are available, including: property, business income interruption, extra expense, flood and civil authority. Separate coverage is also available for items that are frequently damaged in a storm, such as fences and awnings.
Click here to listen to a recording of the webinar, which offers many more useful tips for seeing your business through a disaster.
This year’s National Preparedness Month theme of “Disasters Don’t Wait. Make Your Plan Today” has never been more appropriate. Join the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) during National Preparedness Month for a live webinar on how to prepare for severe weather, COVID-19 interruptions, and other forms of disaster that can have a significant impact on small businesses.
The webinar will showcase small businesses as they share their stories of preparing for and successfully recovering from disaster. In addition to these stories, the webinar will also cover what small business loans are available after a disaster, what tools are available to help businesses prepare, and what you need to know about insurance coverage.
SPEAKERS
Gail Moraton, CBCP – Business Resiliency Manager at IBHS
Alison Bishop, Internal Operations Manager at Spry Health, Inc. (https://spryhealth.com/)
Alejandro Contreras – Director of the Office of Preparedness, Communication and Coordination in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Disaster Assistance (ODA)
Janice Jucker – Co-Owner at Three Brothers Bakery, Houston, TX – 2018 Phoenix Award Winner for Outstanding Small Business Disaster Recovery (https://3brothersbakery.com/)
Loretta Worters – Vice President, Media Relations at Triple-I
From hurricanes to wildfire, tomorrow’s webinar with IBHS, Triple-I and Small Business Administration will cover all disasters and how you can prepare your business.
Perhaps the most emotionally compelling data point invoked by those who would compel insurers – through litigation and legislation – to pay business-interruption claims explicitly excluded from the policies they wrote is the property/casualty insurance industry’s nearly $800 billion policyholder surplus.
Many Americans hear “surplus” and think of a bit of cash they have stashed away for emergencies. And when you consider that nearly 40 percent of Americans surveyed by the Federal Reserve said they would either have to borrow or sell something to cover an unexpected $400 expense – or couldn’t pay it at all – that number may sound like overkill.
Not as much as you think
But policyholder surplus isn’t a “rainy day fund.” It’s an essential part of the industry’s ability to keep the promises it makes to policyholders. And although a number like $800 billion may raise eyebrows, when we look more closely at its components, the amount available to cover claims turns out to be considerably less.
Insurers are regulated on a state-by-state basis. Regulators require them to hold a certain amount in reserve to pay claims based on each insurer’s own risk profile. The aggregation of these reserves – required by every state for every insurer doing business in those states – accounts for about half the oft-cited industry surplus.
Call it $400 billion, for simplicity’s sake.
Each company’s regulator-required surplus can be thought of as that company’s “running on empty” mark – the point at which alarms go off and regulators start talking about requiring it to set even more aside to make sure no policyholders are left in a lurch.
By extension, $400 billion is where alarms begin going off for the entire industry.
It gets worse – or better, depending on your perspective.
In addition to state regulators’ requirements, the private rating agencies that gauge insurers’ financial strength and claims-paying ability don’t want to see reserves get anywhere near “Empty.” To get a strong rating from A.M. Best, Fitch, S&P, or Moody’s, insurers have to keep even more in reserve.
Why do private agency ratings matter? Consumers and businesses use them to determine what insurer they’ll buy coverage from. Also, stronger ratings can contribute to lower borrowing expenses, which can help keep insurers’ operating costs – and, in turn, policyholders’ premiums – at reasonable levels.
So, let’s say these additional reserves amount to about $200 billion for the industry. The nearly $800 billion surplus we started with now falls to about $200 billion.
To cover claims by all personal and commercial policyholders in a given year without prompting regulatory and rating agency actions that could drive up insurers’ costs and policyholders’ premiums.
Which brings us to today.
Losses ordinary and extraordinary
In the first quarter of 2020, the industry experienced its largest-ever quarterly decline in surplus, to $771.9 billion. This decline was due, in large part, to declines in stock value related to the economic recession sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.
Nevertheless, the industry remains financially strong, in large part because the bulk of insurers’ investments are in investment-grade corporate and governmental bonds. And it’s a good thing, too, because the conditions underlying that surplus decline preceded an extremely active hurricane season, atypical wildfire activity, and damages related to civil unrest approaching levels not seen since 1992 – involving losses that are not yet reflected in the surplus.
Insured losses from this year’s Hurricane Isaias are estimated in the vicinity of $5 billion. Hurricane Laura’s losses could, by some estimates, be as “small” as $4 billion or as large as $13 billion.
And the Atlantic hurricane season has not yet peaked.
The 2020 wildfire season is off to a horrific start. From January 1 to September 8, 2020, there were 41,051 wildfires, compared with 35,386 in the same period in 2019, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. About 4.7 million acres were burned in the 2020 period, compared with 4.2 million acres in 2019.
In California alone, wildfires have already burned 2.2 million acres in 2020 — more than any year on record. For context, insured losses for California’s November 2018 fires were estimated at more than $11 billion.
And the 2020 wildfire season still has a way to go.
All this is on top of routine claims for property and casualty losses.
Four billion here, 11 billion there – pretty soon we’re talking about “real money,” against available reserves that are far smaller than they at first appear.
No end in sight
Oh, yeah – and the pandemic-fueled recession isn’t expected to reverse any time soon. Economic growth worldwide remains depressed, with nearly every country experiencing declines in gross domestic product (GDP) – the total value of goods and services produced. GDP growth for the world’s 10 largest insurance markets is expected to decrease by 6.99 percent in 2020, compared to Triple-I’s previous estimate of a 4.9 percent decrease.
If insurers were required to pay business-interruption claims they never agreed to cover – and, therefore, didn’t reserve for – the cost to the industry related to small businesses alone could be as high as $383 billion per month.
This would bankrupt the industry, leaving many policyholders uninsured and insurance itself an untenable business proposition.
Fortunately, Americans seem to be beginning to get this. A recent poll by Future of American Insurance and Reinsurance (FAIR) found the majority of Americans believe the federal government should bear the financial responsibility for helping businesses stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic. Only 16 percent of respondents said insurers should bear the responsibility, and only 8 percent said they believe lawsuits against insurers are the best path for businesses to secure financial relief.
Business interruption losses from a global pandemic are uninsurable due to their sheer scope. Business interruption losses (in the U.S. alone) from the coronavirus are estimated at $220-$383 billion per month — an amount the industry could not and should not be expected to cover.
Americans across the country appear to recognize that only the federal government has the capacity to provide the relief business owners need. A recent poll initiated by Future of American Insurance and Reinsurance (FAIR) found that the majority of Americans believe the government should bear the financial responsibility for helping businesses stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.
The poll, conducted by CivicScience, found that only 16 percent of respondents said they believe insurance companies should bear the responsibility for helping businesses during the pandemic, and only 8 percent believe lawsuits against insurers are the best path for businesses to secure financial relief.
Business interruption insurance contracts were not priced to cover global pandemic risks, so forcing insurers to pay for claims their policies weren’t priced to cover would harm all policyholders, said FAIR in their commentary on the poll results.
A government-backed policy solution can provide immediate relief to struggling business owners and protect insurers’ ability to keep promises to policyholders for covered catastrophe losses, like damage from wildfires and hurricanes.
Trial attorneys’ attempts to retroactively force uninsurable pandemic coverage in business interruption insurance contracts are detrimental to policyholders, communities, insurers, and economic growth. A government-backed solution for struggling businesses in need of relief has never been more urgently needed, FAIR concluded.
ABOUT FAIR FAIR is an initiative of the Insurance Information Institute and its member companies whose mission is to ensure fairness for all customers and safeguard the industry’s longstanding role as a pillar of economic growth and stability.
