"The following article from the Insurance Journal does a great job outlining the missed opportunity that the insurance industry made available to all businesses, and how we might look at insurance and risk planning moving forward." - Oscar
Like everyone else, Peter Lacovara is coping with COVID-19, working at home to limit contagion to the coronavirus and stay healthy. He's also plugging away trying to keep businesses healthy, as well.
In his role as a senior vice president and leader of Marsh's Alternative Risk practice, Lacovara has been fielding emails and phone calls from risk managers about PathogenRX, the broker's innovative parametric insurance policy developed with Munich Re and technology firm Metabiota. The policy, designed to provide business interruption insurance in the event of a pandemic, is the only one of its kind.
The emails and phone calls to Lacovara do not involve claims, as not a single company bought the parametric insurance product following its launch in May 2018. Now, of course, risk managers everywhere are hoping they can still buy it.
"As you can imagine, there's an enormous amount of demand for the product right now," said Lacovara, who joined Marsh in January, scant days after the coronavirus began inconspicuously spreading from Wuhan, China, to other parts of the world. "Risk managers have become painfully aware their property insurance policies exclude pandemic events."
While there may still be time to buy the product for a future pandemic, COVID-19 is off limits. "Unfortunately, it's too late. The coronavirus is excluded from coverage," he said. "That would not have been the case as recently as last November. But you can't buy insurance for your house when it's already on fire."
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