Montreal underwear company UNDZ became a media sensation last week when it announced it was offering a $50,000 insurance policy to male customers who purchased three pairs of UNDZ-brand underwear. The policy was meant to cover the private appendage of the customer in the event it became detached from his body.
However, an official with Lloyd’s has put the kibosh on the salacious story, saying Lloyd’s never agreed to cover the peculiar policy.
“That policy is a fiction,” a spokesperson for Lloyd’s of London said. “Lloyd’s insures a lot of stuff, but it never insured this.”
Bertrand Dore, president of UNDZ, previously told Insurance Business that the guaranteed $50,000 payout was done out of necessity to enter the US market.
“We approached our insurer, and we were told there was going to be a huge problem to obtain coverage if we made this offer in the 50 US states,” Dore said. “We were looking at six months or two years before we could obtain the proper coverage—so we decided to push ahead and pay any claims ourselves, then present that to Lloyd’s—with us paying the $2,500 deductible.”
However, Lloyd’s Canada maintains there is nothing in the language of Dore’s general liability policy to warrant validating a claim.
“There have been some conversations, but nothing is bound,” said Sean Murphy, president of Lloyd’s Canada, attorney in fact in Canada, Lloyd’s Underwriters in Toronto. “There is no cover.”
UNDZ has since updated its website to reflect that Lloyd’s is not liable for the company’s coverage promotion offer.
The policy offering began March 15, and covers castration as long as it is not self-imposed. According to an UNDZ spokesperson, 16,000 men suffer an injury to their penis, or have it detached altogether each year.
