A January 15, 2021, decision from the U.K.'s highest court spells good news for English policyholders. In The Financial Conduct Authority v. Arch Insurance (UK) Ltd., and others, UKSC 2020/0177, the Court held that 21 insurance policies sold by eight leading business interruption insurers provide coverage for losses resulting from COVID-19 and public health measures taken by U.K. authorities. Approximately 700 types of policies across over 60 insurers and 370,000 policyholders could potentially be affected by the outcome of the Supreme Court's rulings.

The Court interpreted the following four types of clauses in the relevant policies:

1. Disease clauses, which provide business interruption coverage for losses resulting from the occurrence of a notifiable disease (including COVID-19) within a specific distance from the business premises.
2. Prevention of access clauses, which provide business interruption coverage for losses from "public authority intervention preventing or hindering access to, or use of, the business premises."
3. Hybrid clauses, which combine the main aspects of the disease clauses and prevention of access clauses
4. Trends clauses, which specify how to quantify business interruption loss

The Supreme Court also considered causation issues in responding to the insurers' arguments that the policyholders would have suffered the same or similar business interruption losses absent the insured peril.