The impact of COVID-19 on insurance has certainly been a topic of some debate of late and one that has and will continue to receive close attention by Insurers, Policy Drafters, Brokers, and the wider insuring community.

Whilst the purpose of this article is not to question the insurance industry’s intention to cover/not cover COVID-19 (pandemic) losses, I do find myself wondering if our wording for cover for losses as a result of infectious disease are as clear as they could be; particularly when considering many insurers themselves may have been caught out by their own wording.

A store with a closed sign on it with the text: "We are temporarily Closed"

Looking back to the beginning of 2020, a common approach to provide cover for losses resultant from Infectious/Contagious disease was to provide blanket cover for losses, with the exception of highly pathogenic Avian Influenza or diseases listed under the Quarantine Act 1908 (Cth)


Pre COVID-19 wording

We will cover You for interruption to or interference with Your Business due to:

b) an outbreak of an infectious or contagious human disease occurring within a 20 kilometre radius of the Premises, however there is no cover for highly pathogenic Avian Influenza or any other diseases declared to be quarantinable diseases under the Quarantine Act 1908 (Cth) and subsequent amendments irrespective of whether discovered at the Premises, or out-breaking elsewhere;

*emphasis mine


Steve Manning

… I do find myself wondering if our wording for cover for losses as a result of infectious disease are as clear as they could be…”

Steve Manning, LMI Group CEO

The issue with this from an Insurer’s perspective was that the Quarantine Act of 1908 had arguably been replaced, not amended in 2015 by the Biosecurity Act of 2015 (Cth).

Is it fair to expect the Policyholder to be able to understand what is, and is not covered by their policy, when doing so would require them to not only carefully read their policy, but also conduct further research into whether Acts of Parliament were still enforced? This is research that the insurers themselves have not undertaken for a duration of almost 4 years.

Fast forward to the present: as highlighted below insurers have begun the process of amending their wording to reflect the current Act. This time however, the phrase ‘or replacements’ has been added as a safety measure to prevent similar issues in the future.

Picture of a desk with a coffee on it. Covid virus overhead.

Post COVID-19 wording

We will cover You for interruption to or interference with Your Business due to:

b) an outbreak of an infectious or contagious human disease occurring within a 20 kilometre radius of the Premises, however there is no cover for highly pathogenic Avian Influenza or any other Listed Human Disease under the Biosecurity Act 2015 (Cth) and subsequent amendments or replacements, irrespective of whether discovered at the Premises or out-breaking elsewhere;

*emphasis mine


Is this the correct approach? It is unquestionable from a legal standpoint that the new wording is far sounder, however does this really change things from the Policyholder’s perspective? They would still need to refer to and understand Acts of Parliament; not exactly Sunday reading at the best of times.

Interested to see if we could learn anything from our neighbours, I jumped on to PolicyComparison.com. With assistance from the experts in the PolicyComparison team, we came across some interesting alternatives:

One such approach originating out of the UK particularly took my interest. This saw the insurer providing cover for losses much like in Australia but with one difference: rather than providing a blanket cover and listing exclusions they approached it from a different angle. This insurer provides cover for ‘Specified Diseases’, but then goes on to define it. In doing so, they clearly list what is covered and leave out what is excluded (sample extract provided below.)


For the purposes of this cover, Specified Disease means any of the following diseases contracted by any person

• Acute encephalitis, Acute poliomyelitis, Anthrax, Chicken pox, Cholera, Diphtheria, Dysentery, Erysipeloid, Legionellosis, Legionnaires, Disease Leprosy, Leptospirosis, Lyme Disease, Malaria, Measles, Meningitis, Meningococcal septicaemia, Mumps, Ophthalmia neonatorum, Paratyphoid fever, Puerperal fever, Plague, Rabies, Relapsing fevers, Rubella, Scarlet fever, Smallpox, Tetanus, Toxoplasmosis, Tuberculosis, Typhoid fever, Typhus fever, Viral hepatitis, Whooping cough, Yellow fever

• Viral haemorrhagic fever caused by the following viruses: Lassa virus, Junin virus, Machupo virus, Sabia virus, Guanarito virus, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Crimean-Congo, haemorrhagic fever virus, Hanta virus, Rift Valley fever virus, Yellow fever virus, Dengue virus.


The positives of this approach are listed below:

1. From a Policyholder’s perspective:

a) The cover is clear, if you see the disease it is covered, if you don’t it’s not. No need to refer to other documents / Acts or the like.

2. From the Insurers’ perspective:

a) There is a level of certainty brought into the underwriting process. What I mean by this is that what is covered at the beginning of the contract period will remain the same for the course of the contract. No new disease that they did not account for when pricing the policy will come out of the blue and take them by surprise.

b) There is no need to wait on Government to list/not list a disease under an Act to find out if they are on risk or not.

c) There is no risk of 3rd party documents altering or changing the intention of the policy wording.

It is in this second point (b.) that the rose-coloured glasses may be lifted and lead us to the negatives of this approach. For the same reason this approach is so sound from an underwriting perspective, it is somewhat restrictive on the Policyholder, effectively narrowing the cover to only those diseases that are listed. This means that should a new disease emerge, even if this new disease were not to fall under the Biosecurity Act 2015 (Cth) no cover would be available as it was not listed on the policy.

The question is then which approach is preferred:

Do you believe the additional cover provided by the somewhat complicated Australian method of referring to Parliamentary Acts outweighs the certainty offered by policies issued in the UK?


Steve Manning


CEO LMI Group