Do you know if you can make an insurance claim for losses due to the pandemic?
Have your sales decreased due to Covid-19 and have you been forced to close down?
You may be entitled to compensation by making an insurance claim for losses due to COVID-19 and you may not know it.
In a recent ruling the Provincial Court of Girona has opened the door to claiming compensation from your business insurer for losses generated during the days of closure due to Covid-19. This creates a real possibility of claiming compensation from the insurance company.
The prohibition to open for business implies for the affected businesses the total cessation of activity. After almost a year of the pandemic, many businesses have exhausted their savings to meet common expenses with an income that cannot be recovered.
If your business has taken out a multi-risk insurance policy, it is likely that the loss of profits is one of the covers included in the clauses of the insurance policy. Generally, the calculation of such compensation can be set according to an amount (100 – 200 euros) for each day of stoppage, and with certain limits.
Key factors to be able to make an insurance claim for losses:
- Be up to date with the payment of insurance premiums.
- That the clauses include a guarantee for loss of profit or similar. My insurance says it doesn’t cover it because the closure was imposed by the government… but that doesn’t mean it’s right. We’ll have to see if (and how) that was covered in the policy.
- That the limitations that may exist to that guarantee do not comply with the provisions of the Girona Court.
- That the business has been directly affected by government measures on specific dates.
You can send us your policy so that we can check FREE OF CHARGE if the clauses include a possible indemnity for the losses generated by the paralysis of the activity with the possibility of making an insurance claim for losses.
Our legal team will review the policy and if there is a possibility of success will contact you to gather the other necessary information.
Can I open the claim on my own?
Of course you can. Our recommendation is that you do it through our lawyers, this way they will make sure that the content, form and method of sending the communication is already valid as a prerequisite to file the claim in case the company refuses to pay you.
My broker says that the policy has limits in the clauses and that is why I can’t make a claim?
You have to review those limits. The judgement of the Provincial Court of Girona makes it very clear that the limits to the guarantees of the policy cannot be in the small print but must be expressly agreed at the time of contracting and must be highlighted in the contract. We can review your case free of charge so you can be sure that you exhaust all your options.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
