Insurance and COVID-19
ASN Events Director Mike Pickford answers some common questions surrounding event insurance and COVID-19.
The first thing to clarify is don’t look for an insurance solution to mitigating pandemic risk. It essentially does not exist. Similarly in Australia, insurance against bushfire risk in Summer is tricky and of course terrorism protection is another no-go space. Insurance is good for unknown and unexpected risk protection – one can interpret that as, if insurers think it is low risk, they are going to feel more comfortable about taking your premium…..funny that.
There are two strategies to enhance protection for things like terrorism, pandemics and so on:
Ensure your venue contracts have force majeure clauses which make sense (or have no contract, that’s very good protection for when things go wrong but not much use when things are going well - you do want to be sure your venue is being reserved for you at the end of the day).
In your first response to an unknown disaster threatening the viability of your meeting, always consider postponement to a future date at the same venue rather than cancellation. Venues and suppliers who have taken your deposits are much easier to talk into new dates than giving the deposit back. In our experience through the COVID-19 crisis, pretty much every venue has taken this stance. Many actually did return deposits on cancellation but there are exceptions. Sometimes a postponement was not possible which will inevitably cause some loss if you wish to return monies to delegates and sponsors (a reasonable position). Venues were willing in our experience to roll deposits forward up to 24 months without penalty.