Beazley has rolled out a digital-based event insurance policy that features simplified policy language, allowing policyholders to better understand their coverage.

The new Beazley Weather Guard “protects event organizers against the effects of severe weather that may cause the cancellation of an outdoor event,” a release said. The policy can also be used by retailers to insure weather-related sales promotions.

The new policy’s language can be easily accessed through a mobile device. It describes precisely and exclusively the coverage purchased in plain English. The very first sentence of each policy spells out the trigger for coverage, along with the sum insured in dollars and any self-insured deductible.

“We wanted to give event organizers a simple but precise description of the coverage they could access at a glance on a mobile phone,” said Beazley contingency underwriter Christian Phillips.  “If you’ve bought a Beazley Weather Guard policy to protect your event against heavy snow, your digital policy will specify ‘snow’ and explain how many inches of snow will trigger coverage.  If the covered peril is excessive heat or cold, your policy will explain how high or low the temperature needs to be to trigger coverage. It’s entirely personalized.”

Prior to the announcement of the new policy, insurance policies had consisted of two parts: an initial ‘declarations’ page summarizing the coverage purchased and a much longer, standard policy wording that shows all possible forms of available coverage, including coverage not purchased. Beazley has integrated both parts of the Weather Guard policy into a single document that is easy to access and even easier to understand.

“Insurers have generally struggled with plain English policy wordings,” remarked Beazley chief marketing officer William Pitt. “Traditional policies are one-size-fits-all documents that describe every possible form of coverage the policyholder might have bought. To remind yourself of what you actually have bought, you have to constantly flick back to the declarations page.

“We asked ourselves: What would happen if all the information on the declarations page was instead integrated into the policy wording itself?” Pitt added. “When we did this, we found that it made the policy much easier to understand.  Instead of ‘named insured,’ we could insert the actual name of the policyholder. Instead of ‘sum insured,’ we could insert a dollar amount.  It all became much less abstract.”