Rates are falling faster than claims are - the UK industry knows what happens next
Lloyd's announces it has turned down £5.1 billion of business – even as global insurers have posted their best underwriting result in 20...
Insurance explained through what actually happened
A policy document tells you what it promises. A claim tells you what an insurer actually paid, and why. Start with the outcome, then work back to the rule that decided it.
Read the claims library See what each cover actually doesClaims in the news
Court rulings, ombudsman decisions and regulator actions on business insurance, each one linked back to the judgment or ruling itself.
Man convicted after faking dog deaths in £31,000 pet insurance fraud
Man convicted after faking dog deaths in £31,000 pet insurance fraud Robert Cretu used near-identical fabricated stories to claim on dead dogs that never existed ####...
Three routes into how business insurance actually works
Read a claim story to see what a policy did, check your own numbers against a calculator, or follow a guide through what each cover actually does.
Read a real claim
See what a policy actually paid, and why, in a dispute drawn from a public judgment or ombudsman decision.
Browse the library →Check your own numbers
Use a calculator for underinsurance or indemnity periods. It shows its working, but the answer is only as good as what you enter.
Use the tools →Follow what each cover does
Work through property, liability and business interruption cover one policy type at a time, in plain terms.
Read the guide →Track the latest rulings
Court decisions, ombudsman findings and regulator actions on business insurance claims, cited as they are reported.
See recent cases →Look up the small print
Plain definitions for terms like condition precedent, average and duty of fair presentation, tied to the cases that tested them.
Open the glossary →
Real outcomes
What the claims actually decided
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FLOOD DAMAGE
A restaurant flooded twice and paid for the damage once
The policy's reinstatement wording decided what the insurer covered the second time.
Read the claim story -
LATE NOTIFICATION
An accountant notified the insurer two months after the event
Professional indemnity cover can turn on when a claim was reported.
Read the claim story -
NO EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY
A builder ran a site with no employers' liability cover in place
The Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 sets a legal floor most policies exceed by choice.
Read the claim story -
TEST CASE
The Supreme Court ruled on specific business interruption wordings
The judgment covered disease and prevention-of-access clauses. It did not rewrite what a standard material damage policy pays.
FCA v Arch Insurance (UK) Ltd and others [2021] UKSC 1
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LATE PAYMENT
Insurers can owe damages for paying a valid claim late
The right exists under the Enterprise Act 2016 for contracts from 4 May 2017, and only where the insurer had no reasonable grounds to dispute the claim.
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WHO CAN COMPLAIN
Not every business can bring a dispute to the ombudsman
The Financial Ombudsman Service only considers complaints from businesses that meet its eligible complainant thresholds.
Explore the guides
Run your own numbers through the tools
Each tool works from the numbers you enter and shows its arithmetic. Get a figure wrong and the answer changes with it.
Underinsurance calculator
See how an insurer applies average to a claim when the sum insured is lower than the true value, with the working shown.
Use the calculator →Cover checklist by trade
Work through the covers a policy typically bundles for tradespeople, shops, offices, landlords and online businesses, one trade at a time.
Check the checklist →Indemnity period estimator
Set a rebuild or recovery timescale and see what happens to lost revenue once the indemnity period on a policy runs out.
Try the estimator →Excess and payout scenario
Change the excess on a claim and watch what the insurer would actually pay out, using the same subtraction it would use.
Try the scenario →See what a policy did before you decide what yours should do
Every story here is a real dispute, with the clause that decided it and a link to the source. Start wherever the case looks like your business.