Despite headaches the covid pandemic caused the insurance industry, positives have emerged from the response, Clyde & Co Partner Gareth Horne says.

Mr Horne, who will speak at the Australian Insurance Law Association (AILA) National Conference next month, says collaboration to bring business interruption test cases to court provided a blueprint for future co-operation, without creating an anti-competitive environment.

Co-operation also occurred internally with underwriters, in-house counsel and claims teams working together on risk management to ensure mistakes, such as references to outdated legislation, were eliminated.

The Full Court appeal judgment delivered on February 21 provides useful guidance for insurers dealing with claims management issues, he says, including in looking at ambiguity and whether “the parties’ objective intent can be ascertained from the contract when read as a whole”.

Mr Horne says the DSpark Tool developed for the covid situation is another positive, and is adaptable to other policies and insurable events, such as bushfire and flood claims.

The web-based portal authorised by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission allowed the aggregation of public information about covid exposure sites and public health orders to help insurers assess related business interruption claims.

“The investment has been made to build the model and it can be repurposed,” Mr Horne says. “It shows industry goodwill to co-operate in a disaster scenario to develop a mutually beneficial, efficient assessment tool.”

The AILA conference, to be held at Doltone House in Sydney on August 10-12, will look at issues including the fallout from covid, climate change, global trends in risk and regulation, class actions and autonomous vehicles.

More details are available here.