Good news from a hotelier who contacted me when his business interruption cover failed to compensate him for lockdown losses. Now, over a year after QIC Europe told CD of Powys that Covid did not count as a “notifiable disease within a 25-mile radius”, it has agreed to pay.
CD’s battle shows the lengths insurers will go to bat away expensive liabilities. QIC, via its broker Davies Group, had variously insisted the pandemic did not render the hotel uninhabitable, despite lockdown, and that there was no demonstrable link between Covid and the hotel’s losses. It then magicked up a clause absent from its policy terms at the time of the claim stating that lockdowns and pandemics weren’t covered.
Now it’s paid the claim, capped at £25,000. “After all their ducking and diving, they have finally given up. I am sure your voice was a valuable contribution in persuading companies to eventually give in to reason,” writes CD. QIC referred me to Davies for a comment and Davies to QIC … and that was the last I heard.
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