Ombudsman News looks at BI “at the premises” complaints

The latest edition of Ombudsman News from FOS looks not only at its plan and consultation (which FIN has covered separately) but also at complaints it has looked at relating to “at the premises” cover in business interruption insurance claims.  FOS will look at what is fair and reasonable in all the circumstances for each individual complaint.  There are many variants of policies with different terms, and the circumstances of each complaint are unique. However, in general, FOS says that it has not seen many cases which were able to provide sufficient evidence that Covid was “at the premises”. It also noted that, while the test case did not consider specifically what “at the premises” meant, it did look at cases that required the presence of Covid within a certain radius, and FOS will in principle apply the same logic when considering “at the premises” complaints.  It gave examples of cases it did not uphold and one example of a case where it did uphold the complaint.