The insurance industry in the United States continues to thwart legislative solutions for disputed COVID-19-related losses under property/business interruption policies and resists efforts to group lawsuits together into multi-district federal litigation or class actions. Meanwhile, the independent regulator of insurers in the United Kingdom, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), is trying to take a more organized and direct approach. Although the FCA indicated that it did not believe coverage existed for most claims for COVID-19-related losses, the FCA has identified the key language at issue in the various insurance policies, the universal or prevalent facts presented, and the legal questions posed. The regulator has announced an initiative to begin resolving these disputed claims by bringing a series of test cases in U.K. courts to answer these coverage questions. Though the test cases are being resolved under the law of the United Kingdom, the outcomes are likely to influence American courts that are grappling with many of the same issues under similar insurance policy language. Depending on the success of the test cases in streamlining these disputes in the U.K., U.S. policyholders may want to consider adopting a similar approach to fast-track their claims towards settlement.
