The decisive action that the
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) took earlier in the year to
bring legal clarity to the legitimacy of the commercial insurance
business interruption clauses by selecting eight insurers in a test
case at the High Court resulted in the High Court judgment that the
wordings in many of the policies examined but not all, did, in
fact, validate the insured businesses' claims, bringing hope
to an estimated 370,000 policyholders. Both the FCA and six
of the insurers filed “leapfrog” appeal application to
fast-track to the Supreme Court in the expectation of an appeal by
the insurers which was set to be heard by the end of the year.
In a surprising about-face the anticipated appeal to the Supreme
Court by the insurers has now been called off by six of the
participating insurers RSA, QBE, Hiscox, MS Amlin , Argenta and
Arch. The other two insurers, Zurich and Ecclesiastical who
were part of the original legal action, had previously
