Jon Hardin was quoted in "Many Business Insurance Policies Won’t Cover Loss Due to Coronavirus," an article in Portland Monthly, regarding business insurance policy coverage of loss due to the coronavirus. 

“So when you have disease-related events from the past that caused insurers to have to pay out claims, then when they go to write policies for the future, they start to put an exclusions that prevent them from having to repair those types of claims again,” Jon says. “And then what they do is offer another product that they can charge extra money for if you want to purchase it to carve that coverage back into the policy.”

They might be thinking about terrorism in some parts of the country, certainly people were after 9/11,” he says. “But you know, we just didn’t see this even with SARS and H1N1, both of which happened over a decade ago. We did not see this big of a spread and big of an impact outside of Asia.”

“It doesn’t hurt to file a claim even if even if it’s going to be met with a swift denial because you don’t want to be in a situation where you failed to provide notice,” Jon says. “Then there’s a legislative [fix] six months down the road, but then the insurance company says well you didn’t file a claim, it’s too late.”