Finding the opportunity in adversity
True insurance-industry resilience in the face of such historic challenges may take more than philanthropy.
I became a journalist in much the same way that I’ve heard many insurance professionals find their careers: I fell into it.
Among the reasons I’m still at it after more than two decades: Telling stories about real life rarely fails to surprise and enlighten me. I try to share that same sense of wide-eyed discovery with my readers.
It follows that after a handful of years with NU Property & Casualty magazine and PropertyCasualty360.com, I am still telling stories about insurance — because the industry and its people continue to surprise and enlighten me.
Now, as mainstream news outlets run amok with stories about coverage disputes, it may be time for insurers to surprise and enlighten more people than just me.
We were about a week into my state’s COVID-19 shutdown when I read the first of many local news stories about a small-business owner cringing over the fact that his business interruption policy excludes pandemic-related closure expenses.
“I’m 32 years without a claim, ever,” the owner of Pinon’s restaurant in Aspen told The Denver Post in late March. “Now they tell me (after) the $420,000 that I’ve paid in premiums all these years that I don’t have the coverage because it’s a virus and the policy specifically excludes virus.”
The story concluded that this business owner and “scores of others like him” may have to permanently close his restaurant, leaving readers with the impression that the absence of insurance compensation could be to blame for the loss of a community staple.
The pandemic has made one thing crystal clear: Even smart, savvy people are often a blank slate when it comes to insurance. They don’t understand their own personal or commercial policies, nor do they have the slightest inkling about the workings of the insurance industry at large.
If people did understand how insurance works, as well as the way it supports a healthy economy, there wouldn’t currently be a legislative push to compel carriers to pay the many business interruption claims to come out of the pandemic.
This public relations juggernaut is but one of the challenges that carriers face, says the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) fact sheet titled “Insurers Offer Forward-Looking Solutions for COVID-19 Recovery.” The authors also outline an anticipated uptick in workers’ comp claims, increased premiums, decreased insurer investment income, and the daunting task of responding to the pandemic while also managing more common catastrophes such as floods, hurricanes and wildfires — a crisis people in Michigan are now intimately familiar with in the wake of recent dam failures there.
The I.I.I. also used this particular COVID-19 fact sheet to illustrate how insurers have long been involved in community development:
“This time of need is no exception,” it reads. “So far, millions of dollars have been funneled into communities through insurer charitable donations.”
True insurance-industry resilience in the face of such historic challenges may take more than philanthropy. It’s likely to come back to policyholders and prospects like that restaurateur in Aspen. These clients don’t want to fight with their carriers; they want to know what the next catastrophe might be and how they can better prepare for it. Only seasoned risk and insurance experts can facilitate such education and preparation.
Insurance organizations have mountains to climb in the coming months, but this is also a time when the industry can prove its value. I, for one, am excited to see that silver lining emerge.
And that’s what’s top of mind for me this month.
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