Do you own a business in Arkansas that has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic? Did you file a business interruption claim only for your insurer to deny your claim and inform you that your policy doesn’t cover pandemics? Like many business owners in Arkansas, you may be feeling hopeless and out of luck, but there may still be a way for you to collect something from the policy that you have been paying on since you first opened your business.
According to the Arkansas Insurance Department (AID), while business interruption insurance typically won’t kick in unless your business operations were disrupted by a covered peril that caused physical damage to your property, you may still have coverage. The key to finding out is by reading through your policy carefully or having an experienced Arkansas insurance claims attorney read through it for you. While the majority of policies won’t pay out for business interruption claims stemming from COVID-19 losses, it all depends on the verbiage in your policy.
Another way you may be able to recover money for the losses you experienced is by filing a civil authority claim given you purchased this coverage. Civil authority coverage is additional coverage you can purchase as part of a business interruption insurance policy. This coverage typically pays for losses that were brought on by the “forced closure of property by a civil authority.” Now, with this type of coverage, the AID says that it usually applies “when an insured is unable to access its property due to a government order as a result of physical damage to an adjacent or nearby property.”
Still worried you won’t be able to obtain the relief you need from your insurer? Then keep on reading.
Although both business interruption insurance and civil authority coverage both require that your business operations were disrupted by physical damage, the AID announced that the Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO) recently developed two new endorsement forms relating to business interruption insurance and COVID-19. The AID says that these forms “provide coverage for actual loss of business income and extra expenses caused by a civil authority ordering the closing of an insured’s premises.”
The AID has approved these forms for use if an insurer in Arkansas wishes to adopt them and file them with the department.
Now, if your insurer continues to deny your claim, even if you file one using your civil authority coverage, you can always turn to an insurance claims denial lawyer in Arkansas for legal assistance. Although insurers are trying to protect the surplus funds they have stocked away, you have rights as a policyholder and the lawyers USAttorneys.com can connect you with will ensure those rights are properly exercised.