Insurance “Contract Certainty” Revisited

The events of ‘9/11’ shattered conventional thinking about insurance in a number of ways. A tricky debate has centred on the question of what cover had been provided for the Twin Towers at the time of the attack. By September 11^th no final wordings had been agreed, there were only temporary contracts from the insurers pledging to provide insurance. After the Trade Centre collapsed, the leaseholder, Larry Silverstein claimed that there had been two events, based on the two plane strikes, while the insurers and re-insurers argued that there had been one event based on a single coordinated terrorist attack. It was out of this febrile atmosphere that a call came from the insurance market for greater contract certainty. And so the drive for clarity began, led by the FSA.