Introduction
Thank you for taking the time to participate in this survey. For those who have not been involved before, the last survey in the middle of 2009 suggested that some 52% of business interruption policies have declared amounts that are too low.
Where there is an inadequacy, this tends to be significant – on average inadequately declared policies are only 1/3rd of the amount that they should be.
In extreme cases this might mean that the risks that Insurers have accepted are different in reality to those implied by the sums insured and such policies might be voidable.
Nobody wants to be in a position where this is even a possibility. Insurers do not want to have to consider these issues – it is better for an appropriate premium to have been received and for issues of policy liability to not be complicated by things that can be avoided. For the policyholder, anything that might delay a liability decision (or worst) is not welcome. Nobody wants surprises.
This survey again attempts to identify the degree of under declaration but will also try and establish some of the reasons why under insurance might arise. This survey should not take long to fill in. There is an opportunity to add narrative comments if there are issues that occur to you that are not the subject of questions and we would welcome any feedback. The collated results will be made available on the CILA website next year and will be disseminated as widely as possible with a view to trying to identify anything that can be done differently to reduce what might be an avoidable problem.