Beazley Cancellation Plus coverage helps event organizers recoup the costs for both cancelled events and those that suffer from poor attendance due to extremely cold, hot or rainy conditions.
PRODUCT: Event cancellation insurance coverage with Weather Guard
COMPANY: Beazley
BEST RATING: A (Excellent)
AVAILABILITY: Coverage is available through appointed agents and brokers.
FOCUS: Your favorite band is playing an outdoor concert. When the tickets go on sale, you wake at dawn, go online and score some for yourself and five of your closest friends. After waiting three long months, the day of the concert finally arrives. One hour before show time, the clouds darken—and the downpour begins.
Outdoor sporting events, festivals, fairs and concerts depend on good weather. But each year, hundreds of events are canceled, abandoned, interrupted or postponed due to bad weather. Many more face conditions that keep ticket buyers at bay or cause attendees to spend less time and money at a venue—all of which can jeopardize business growth, lead to unbudgeted expenditures and cause volatility in earnings.
Beazley Cancellation Plus coverage helps event organizers recoup the costs for both cancelled events and those that suffer from poor attendance due to extremely cold, hot or rainy conditions.
“Events are cancelled for a wide variety of reasons, including non-appearances by performers, power failures and adverse weather,” explains Christian Phillips, Beazley’s U.S. focus group leader for contingency business. “There are also many events that are not canceled, but merely limp on, with revenues seriously impacted by poor weather. Cancellation Plus covers event organizers for both contingencies, at a markedly lower price than they would pay for buying both forms of coverage separately.”
Event cancellation insurance is common for major events, but event organizers lack an effective way to account for reduced revenues from concessions and last-minute ticket sales when an event goes on despite poor weather. Not anymore: Beazley’s Cancellation Plus endorsement enables event planners to manage the impact of reduced revenue from events that suffer poor weather conditions, but are not canceled.
UNDERWRITING: Coverage includes event cancellation for adverse weather, national mourning, industrial action, third-party labor disputes, earthquakes and windstorms. It also includes acts of terrorism, including threat, up to $1 million or 50% of the limit of indemnity— whichever is less—within 100 miles of the event venue and within 50 days of the scheduled start date of the event.
Additional coverage options include non-appearance of key performers and speakers, and catastrophic non-appearance of teams or large groups; requisition or confiscation of property or venue; and communicable disease, civil commotion and war.
Weather Guard—which accesses a comprehensive weather database that sources information from more than 5,500 weather stations worldwide—covers rainfall during the key hours of an event, protecting 20% of gross revenue. Rainfall threshold and hours of coverage vary by event, location and budget. Beazley can adjust limits to represent more or less of the gross revenue based on event profile. Stated value cover does not require the event to be canceled or abandoned. If the insured threshold of rainfall occurs during the hours of coverage, the policy pays the Weather Guard sublimit.
MINIMUM PREMIUM: $1,000.
TARGET: Event planners and organizers.
COVERAGE TERRITORY: All 50 U.S. states.
CONTACT: Christian Phillips, U.S. focus group leader for contingency business; Beazley Group, Two Liberty Place, 50 S. 16th Street, Suite 2700, Philadelphia, PA 19102; 215-446-8426.
Ronimarie Acord is an IA contributor.
