Business has moral obligations

Insurance giant Santam has a yellow umbrella as its brand symbol – ironic considering its tooth and-nail fight to duck paying out on Covid-related business losses claims.

What good is having an insurance umbrella for the proverbial financial rainy day (as the coronavirus pandemic has been for business across the globe), if you can’t open it to get shelter?

It is about time, then, that Santam faced up to its moral (and legal) obligations to its policy holders – most of them in the tourism and hospitality business – to compensate them for contingent business interruption losses they suffered.

READ MORE: Santam relents and agrees to pay out Covid-19 business interruption claims

Santam has fought (and lost) in court on the exact definition of what is covered by the contingent business interruption policy extensions, going as far as to argue that these applied only to the direct effects of the virus itself and not the loss of business brought about by the lockdowns applied in terms of the country’s disaster legislation.

It is critical that insurers who take money from customers and promise them cover must not be allowed to evade those responsibilities, no matter how onerous they may be.

If we are to rebuild a just society in the wake of Covid-19’s devastation, it must be founded on morality.

ALSO READ: Court orders insurance giants to pay business claims

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