Key takeaways:
In recent years, Russia has suffered a series of large fires, the increased number of which many experts attribute to the moratorium on scheduled and unscheduled inspections of businesses, extended to 2024.
The most "high-profile" fires occurred in warehouses and shopping centers. This led to the inclusion in insurance contracts of additional restrictions and exclusions from insurance coverage (primarily in terms of fire risks) both for warehouse facilities and shopping centers and for other real estate objects.
Some of the additional exclusions were recommended by the RNPC (Russian National Reinsurance Company) and some were initiated by the insurers themselves. Quite often recommended by the RNRC additional exclusions from insurance coverage are included in the contracts in an "extended" form, which leads to additional limitation of insurance coverage.
The drafts of insurance contracts proposed by insurers are not "unchangeable" and are negotiable. If a risk from a contract is reinsured in RNRC , the insurer may amend the contract to the extent such changes do not contradict RNRC recommendations.
Policyholders can and should initiate negotiations with insurers to:
take into account the needs and specifics of the policyholder (if appropriate), and to
maximize all agreements regarding the scope of coverage.
Special attention should also be paid to filling in the insurance application. Insurers more and more often apply with claims for invalidation of insurance contracts after the insured event on the basis of providing false information in the insurance application.
The presence of a formally unclosed prescription of the Ministry of Emergency Situations with actual elimination of all violations specified in it by the time of conclusion of the insurance contract may become the basis for invalidation of the insurance contract at the claim of the insurer, if the policyholder did not inform the insurer about the presence of such formally unclosed prescription when concluding the insurance contract.
The insurer is not obliged to verify on his own the existence of prescriptions, including by the Unified Register of Inspections.
The insurer's awareness of the existence of a violation of fire safety requirements (as a result of an inspection of the insured object) does not mean that the insurer has agreed to cover insured events that may arise in connection with such violation, if there is a general exclusion in the insurance rules according to which a fire due to violation of fire safety requirements is not an insured event.
Additional attention paid by the policyholder to the insurance application and the terms and conditions of the insurance contract itself can significantly improve the policyholder's position in settling the insured event.
The value of an insurance contract for the policyholder should be assessed not by the amount of the insurance premium paid, but by the amount of the insured sum (max insurance compensation) that the policyholder will be able to receive in case of the insured event under such a contract.