Future trends in underwriting

There is now a trend to move away from stand-alone general insurance products (i.e. policies generally covering one peril) such as the standard fire policy, theft, money, goods in transit, business interruption and the like. On a series drawback, with such products in their tendency to generate disputes as some clients interpret the meaning of the cover more broadly than what may be provided. For example, a lay person can easily interpret that their theft business policy also covers them for theft of money or loss of goods while in transit through car hijacking.

Similarly, someone with a standard fire policy may be under the illusion that they are covered for perils as well. To avoid these problems, these are now a move to issue all risks asset protection policies, to virtually all small and medium business enterprises as these may not have capacity to employ insurance expert’s o advise them. Stand-alone policies are then restricted to large organizations which have the capacity to employ such experts.