UK Insurers Pay Over $650 Million In Claims To Businesses

U.K. insurers have paid out around 470 million pounds (about $652 million) in business claims to those affected by COVID-19, according to data from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Insurers have released data on the progress of business interruption (BI) claims, and the aggregate value includes 2,030 unsettled claims totaling 192,084,302 pounds (about $266 million) in interim payments, the FCA stated.

There are also 8,177 claims from which final settlements have been agreed, which are valued at 279,823,468 pounds (about $388 million), according to the FCA.

This means there are around 10,207 BI policyholders out of 21,140 that have received at least an interim payment, the FCA stated.

The FCA noted some of the insurers might have come to differing conclusions on whether similar policies are capable of responding to the pandemic, in particular for cases which have required the policyholder to prove that COVID-19 was present at their premises. That may also affect the amount of accepted and pending claims reported by some insurers.

The FCA said it “will work with relevant insurers to ensure consistency in future reporting and will gather and publish this data each month.”

According to the FCA, the claims numbers reported are those with which the insurer has received all the information needed for the calculation of the total value of a claim.

Slow insurance claim payouts have been a pain point for businesses, with an especially debilitating effect on small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in spite of the fact that they’re meant to make things right for those businesses.

Azuraye Wycoff, executive manager at Boston-based short-distance moving and storage services provider Small Haul, said late insurance payoffs can seriously hobble a company’s ability to make payments on time or do business regularly.

She said late payments are usually made by paper checks and “pretty much anything” would be more efficient than that for her business.