WEDDING LIABILITY INSURANCE :

Wedding liability insurance has become a requirement particularly in the Indian Market where the wedding can last for a week straight instead of the customary 2 days in the other countries. Yet, we find that all the developed insurance markets cater to these needs while the ones that need it the most have to go with substandard ones with minimalistic coverages.

Features covered under Wedding Liability Insurance ::

The Wedding Liability package policy that we are trying to propose will include a multitude of options from which the client can pick and choose, to customised to their needs and protect their interest on multiple fronts.

Firstly, to start with, we can include the showstoppers, the  bride, groom and their immediate family in the Personal Accident Cover and the Emergency Medical Hospitalisation Cover from the date of issuing the policy up to the actual wedding is wrapped up, which will take care of any last minute accidents and ensure speedy recovery so that they can hopefully make it to the wedding in time. This cover can also be extended to cover any accidental, unforeseen injury that a guest might suffer at the wedding itself for an additional premium. This can then act as a Public Liability Cover.

Secondly, the Property Damage Liability can be attached to this in case the decorators or your guest’s vehicle damage the property and you in turn are held responsible by the owners. This policy can compensate them on your behalf saving you from your already surrounding expenses. This can also be provided on a floater basis to cover the multiple locations chosen right from your haldi to your reception.

Thirdly, Wedding Cancellation Cover is another one that can be added in case you have to call off the wedding or reschedule it due to any unfortunate circumstances outside of your control. There are always those non-refundable charges that you would have to bare and the additional ones where these cancellations have to be conveyed to everybody adding to further unwanted losses. This cover could potentially indemnify you for all of these damages.

Fourthly the days of only Punjabi wedding serving up liquor with an open bar are long gone. This necessitates the need of Host Liquor Liability Insurance. This cover can provide for any accidental fire spread due to alcohol to the random fights leading to injury because of the inebriated state of the guests. You should not have to pay for other’s mistakes and this policy will ensure that you don’t have to.

The fifth cover will be Bridal Garment Cover which will include all the outfits of the Bride and the Groom as listed.

The Sixth cover can be one to protect the Gifts, the Dehaj and anything else that you receive on your wedding on non-monetary basis which can get damaged in the hustle bustle or be stolen or burgled by some one. This will usually require a FIR but shall be cover nonetheless.

Other Risks and Add on covers :

1. Photographer and Videographer cover where it will cover the costs of replacing the artist in case of last minute cancellation on their side. In the case of loss, theft of damages due to listed perils of the negatives or the original themselves, the cost of re-staging and re-taking these pictures will also be covered.
2. Vendor Cancellation cover, where any cancellation made within 15days from the Vendors end shall be covered. In case of such cancellation, replacing the vendor can be difficult and cost more due to such a short notice period. The excess loss will be paid out.
3. A mediclaim or health cover for international destinations can be cross sold to cover lost or misplaced baggage and passports to cancelled flights, missed connections, bounced booking and so many more.
4. Honeymoon plans of the wedded couple which shall include all the benefits of a travel insurance but at a lower rate due to it being clubbed with the base policy.
5. Fire Work which will cover any accidents, injury or fire damaging property and lives due to their misfiring or mishandling.
6. The Act of God and weather perils can also be covered so that in case your wedding gets disrupted due to earthquakes, floods, storms or any such unforeseen events, all the other covers remain valid and you are reimbursed for the same. Something as simple as unpredicted rains ruining your arrangements and beautiful open air ceremony should not ruin your day. This add-on will reimburse you for any last minute change in location and alternative arrangements that you may have to make to keep the show going.
7. The extremely important rider will eb insurance of Change in Material Risk Rider. We all are aware of how we can overshoot our budget at these momentous occasions. This results in not just hefty spending but also, insurmountable change in the risk that the insurer was willing to underwrite. It’s important that at the time of claim, the loss does not become unpayable due to underinsurance.
8. An engagement Ceremony Rider can also be added. In case the weeding would take place within a specific time period of the engagement itself, the engagement party too would be included in this cover.
9. A Key Man Insurance Rider can also be added where in case any of the insured under the policy are kidnapped and are subsequently hold for ransom, the insurer will cover your family for the same post thorough investigation from the police and authorities. This will also cover any cancellation and postponement of the event due to the same reason.
10. Gate Crasher Rider can be another extension offered in case such unwanted parties force their way in and cause any unnecessary damage or incident which is beyond your control.
11. The fitness benefit cover can be added to enhance the offering to the potential clientele. This will allow the couple to consult nutritionists, yoga and other fitness trainers and get a health club membership at a subsidized rate to get in shape and lose weight.

Despite these benefits, there are some events which most insurers will be unwilling to cover. Any kind of consequential losses involved in any event and any claims arising due to suicide or self inflicted / imposed injury will not be covered. Any marriage held under duress, between unwilling participants, any child marriages or such illegal cases will also be void an initio.

A “Change of Heart” will be another incident which  will be excluded under this cover. While Julia Roberts may be an expert at pulling of The Runaway Bride, the insurers will not appreciate the same stunts being pulled y either of the bride or the groom/

Conclusion : So while there are some insurance policies that do cover your weddings in India in a customized manner for as risk free a wedding as possible.  It is always better to be safe than sorry.

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The top cyber risks for insurers

Sponsored: Swiss Re’s Maya Bundt discusses the biggest cyber risks for insurers and whether the solutions from reinsurers are adequate for today’s fast-evolving cyber landscape

Many insurers are still in the process of defining their own risk appetite for cyber risks. If insurers offer their customers cyber protection, they need to manage their exposures and watch out for risk accumulation in their portfolio. At the same time, even insurance carriers not actively offering cyber products cannot lean back. Also they should ask themselves how big their exposure to silent cyber is and how these exposures accumulate in their portfolios.

In some ways, reinsuring cyber risk is not different than reinsuring any other line of business. The normal reinsurance structures come to play, like Quota Shares, Excess of Loss Treaties, or facultative reinsurance. One of the structures we currently do not find very often are per-event treaties, mainly based on the fact that it is particularly difficult to find a sensible and working cyber event definition. The definitions that work well for the (re)insurance industry in areas like natural catastrophe or terrorism are not good fits for cyber events. That’s where we must adapt and come up with new concepts that fit the cyber world better. It may become possible to develop an industry-wide standard index for cyber losses. That would allow us to circumvent the definition of a cyber event for the purpose of structuring certain reinsurance contracts.

In terms of coverage areas, reinsurers usually offer first and third party coverages. On a first party basis reinsurers cover business interruption from a cyber incident as well as data restoration and extortion. For third party liability they cover for example data breach and network security liability, as well as crisis management costs for both first-party and third-party events.

It is critical to recognise the evolution of cyber risks. Therefore insurers and reinsurers must maintain a constant dialogue about the nature of cyber risks and the development of the insurance market. We must assess trends based on any new or additional information and take conscious decisions on coverages, pricing, and exclusions.

There are multiple ways reinsurers can support their cedents beyond pure risk transfer.

For example, reinsurers can provide analytics tools that help insurers to better understand the risks they write, as well as the accumulation of the risks in their portfolios.

Reinsurers can help cedents build suitable products for their markets and target customer segments, supporting with expertise and knowledge on wording, costing, risk engineering and so on.

An important aspect of the cyber insurance policy are usually the additional services that help the insured prevent and deal with cyber risks. A reinsurer can support their cedents with a pre-existing eco-system of suitable vendors who are offering these value added services and those services can then be integrated into the original insurance products.

Reinsurers can also support their cedents with advice on wordings. When markets develop as quickly as the cyber insurance market right now, there are many wordings out there in the market that have not been tested yet. Some of these wordings might have unintended consequences for either the insured or for the insurance carrier and their reinsurers. We therefore always advertise for utmost care and a strong and multi-stakeholder view on newly developing wordings in the cyber insurance space.

Last but not least reinsurers can help their cedents estimate their potential cyber accumulation in their portfolios, both for actively written, affirmative cyber as well as for cyber perils hidden in traditional lines of business. This is an important step in order to determine risk transfer needs and to find the right reinsurance structures.

The development of a profitable and sustainable cyber insurance market is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. All stakeholders, reinsurers, insurers and brokers need to work together to bring the most suitable and attractive products to the customers and therefore help them become more cyber resilient.