COVID-19: Challenges for the Insurance Industry

People and businesses throughout the United States and around the world have been—and, by all accounts, will continue to be for some time—significantly impacted by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We anticipate that individuals and businesses seeking recovery for their losses due to virus exposure and the operational interruptions the virus is causing will assert creative liability theories in an effort to recover under their insurance programs. We expect these claimants to aggressively pursue claims premised on novel measures of damages in support of their recovery efforts. As a result, the insurance industry can expect that all types of insurance products will be tested as they are challenged by policyholders, reexamined by state and federal legislatures, and scrutinized by courts across the globe.