‘Our insurer’s trying to wriggle out of paying’
Climbing centre facing cliff edge
THE boss of a family-run iT firm warned that taxpayers would end up footing the bill for his insurers refusal to pay out.
James gulliver, managing director of family-run netmatters in Wymondham, norfolk, has been forced to furlough more of the 70 staff because of Hiscox’s ‘immoral’ decision to refuse to pay the £100,000 he says they are due.
He started the company with his brother Chris 12 years ago and has been paying Hiscox for business interruption and building insurance cover. He says: ‘We built up the business gradually and have always been very risk-adverse, taking out insurance to cover us if the worst did happen.
‘now i just think, why did we bother?’ He said coronavirus is without question the worst thing his business has had to deal with.
He adds: ‘it’s terrifying what has happened. But everyone else — customers, staff, suppliers and the government — has tried to do their best in these troubled times.
‘Our insurer is the only bad guy, trying to wriggle out of any liability.
‘it’s really not what you expect from a supposedly reputable insurer.
‘Our no1 goal is to keep all our staff in jobs, and we have got a plan in place to do this, but this has meant we had to furlough more staff at more expense to the taxpayer.
‘The whole country is paying for this failure by the insurance company to pay up, not just the businesses directly impacted.’
The company’s policy stated Hiscox would pay out if the company was unable to use its premises due to outbreak of ‘any human infectious or human contagious disease’ of which the local authority had been notified. But when they requested the payout they were told that this cover would only apply when there was an incident within a one-mile radius of the insured premises which led to official measures that prevented entry.
The insurer said an example would be where the police cordon off the area surrounding a riot or a hotel is evacuated by the police following a nearby gas leak or fire.
‘The multitude of wide-ranging measures the government is taking to contain the coronavirus pandemic are very different in nature,’ a spokesman explains.
James says: ‘This makes no sense. it’s there in black and white that we would be covered, but they are trying to say “we didn’t really mean that”.
‘it’s morally wrong. A lot of firms will probably go out of business because this was their lifeline.
‘Many smaller companies could not survive without the hundred grand.’
A CLiMBing centre is facing a financial mountain to climb after being refused a ‘vital’ £100,000 insurance payment.
Father-of-two Simon Ager says the Pinnacle Climbing Centre, which he runs with his wife Cee, currently has ‘zero income but lots of costs’ after being forced to shut during lockdown.
He says: ‘it’s a small business but i’ve always tried to run it responsibly, which included buying good insurance to protect the company, our staff and the people we served.’
He thought the northampton-based company, which has ten full-time staff and 25 freelancers, would be covered because he had a policy including financial losses for businesses unable to trade following ‘an occurrence of any human infectious or human contagious disease’.
But despite Chancellor rishi Sunak saying the government’s initial recommendation for people not to visit leisure businesses was enough to satisfy insurance claims, Hiscox rejected the claim.
Simon says: ‘The brokers promoted this policy because it has a wide range of cover.’