Update in response to COVID-19 (Coronavirus)

Our priorities remain clear: to do our utmost to secure the wellbeing of our colleagues, clients, and business partners by responding to the outbreak through appropriate precautions, while we continue to run our business and service our clients fully.

Our teams do everything in their power to limit disruption or delay of any kind to our services and to fully meet our obligations in underwriting, policy issue and processing as well as claims handling.

As we observe strong commitment from our clients, brokers and service partners to ensure business continuity in the current extraordinary situation we don’t expect any delay on the regular renewal process of insurance contracts in the coming weeks.

Should you have any questions regarding renewals, premium payment terms or underwriting implications of a temporary shutdown of premises, please contact your usual contact person at AGCS. We will evaluate each request on a case by case basis reflecting the individual circumstances of a company.

We realize that you as our business partner or policyholder may inquire about policy coverage in relation to any risks presented by COVID-19. We want to assure you that we will continue to work with you to address your specific questions and support you if appropriate to take all reasonable and necessary steps to mitigate or otherwise limit potential losses. To ensure a speedy claims settlement process we have established additional claims resources.

AGCS has a few insurance products that may or may not provide coverage for a range of exposures potentially arising out of infectious disease outbreaks. Coverages under particular policies can vary greatly and we will review every claim submitted to determine on a case by case basis whether coverage is available.

In general, any standard property and business interruption coverage must be triggered by physical loss or damage to property at an insured location and infectious disease is usually not a covered peril.

Following the announcement of the Supreme Court's ruling on the Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) business interruption case we wanted to advise you of our next steps. Although Allianz was not a defendant in the test case, we welcome the clarity the judgment will provide and have continued to make payments on claims where we believe there is valid cover.

As you will appreciate, the content of the judgment is complex in nature and so we'll require some time to digest the points of law and understand how this will affect customers. We have already sent a holding letter to all affected customers in line with the FCA guidelines. Following this, a further letter will be issued to those customers detailing how the outcome of the judgment affects their claim.

Claims that had previously been repudiated have been reviewed and the decision on these cases remains unchanged.

We appreciate this is an extremely challenging time for business owners who may have a number of questions related to the FCA test case appeal. Information can be found in the FAQs below.

What does the FCA test case appeal outcome mean for Allianz Covid-related business interruption claims?
The vast majority of Allianz policies do not extend to include cover in respect of losses caused by Covid-19.  The initial FCA test case and subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court case related to a small number of specialised policies only.  A very small number of Allianz claims were potentially affected by this court action.   

How has Allianz kept customers updated?
Allianz wrote to any customers whose claims were potentially affected by the court case.  After the initial court case judgement was handed down in September 2020, Allianz wrote again to those customers to confirm if their case may be affected by the appeal.

What if my BI claim was already repudiated?
If we have already turned down your claim and you haven’t received a communication from us to say that your case may be affected by the appeal, our decision will remain unaltered and your claim will still not be covered. This is because the court case and subsequent appeal only involved a small number of policies. If we haven’t written to you to say that your case may be affected by the test case or appeal, it means that no policies similar to yours were being considered by the court.

What if my claim is affected by the appeal?
Only a small number of claims are potentially affected by the appeal.  If your claim falls under this category, we would have written to you to explain that.  Allianz was not one of the insurance companies involved in the court case, so we are currently carefully considering how the judgement will affect those policies. We’ll communicate our decision to customers who have made claims that are affected by the appeal as soon as possible.

Allianz closely monitors the situation globally, regionally and locally and constantly adjust measures accordingly. The Board of Management of Allianz SE has activated the Allianz Group Crisis Unit (GCU). The GCU’s responsibility is to take Covid-19 related strategic decisions at Group level.

Allianz is effectively combining safety and containment provisions with response measures, in order to keep employees safe as far as possible and ensure business continuity while we continue to run our business and service our clients fully.

With the outbreak’s spread worldwide, we have kept the business running effectively through the commitment and dedication of our teams, using remote working or split team working to minimize exposure, where needed.

In many of the locations where AGCS does business, local authorities have now started to release containment measures and continue to adjust as the situation evolves. Many businesses and their staff are returning to their premises and restarting operations in a gradual approach. AGCS, together with Allianz Group, has also defined a “Return to Office” strategy to prepare for a cautious return of our staff once the time is right considering the situation in the respective country and office location.

We still have restricted business travel and meetings to the most essential activities, therefore digital interaction and communication are to continue for the time being. In practice, however, many customers already deal with us day to day on a ‘virtual’ basis, and we will make every effort to ensure that customer contact is maintained fully through remote channels.