Many businesses forced to close during the COVID-19 pandemic held business interruption insurance policies they had envisaged would provide them with coverage. The 2020 Supreme Court test case judgment only considered the wording set out in certain standard policies issued by a handful of insurers leaving many policyholders uncertain as to whether their claims would be covered. A series of High Court decisions this year have helped to address some of that uncertainty - and we explore below a number of decisions which have largely been favourable to policyholders.

The Supreme Court today handed down a series of judgments providing clarification on the principles that will apply when determining coverage for COVID-19 related claims under certain commonly used policy terms in different insurers’ business interruption policies. In this article, Lauren Pender considers the Supreme Court's decision and what that is likely to mean in practice for insurers and insureds.