General Insurance Products: Property, Liability, Motor, Travel and Personal Accident
Domain 5 is the product syllabus. Questions mix policy wording with statutory requirements, so learn each product's core cover, main exclusions and the statute that makes any part of it compulsory.
Property and business interruption
Fire policies cover named perils - fire, lightning, explosion of domestic gas - with extensions for special perils such as storm, flood, burst pipes, impact, riot and malicious damage. All-risks wording reverses the burden: everything is covered unless excluded. Cover runs on reinstatement or indemnity basis, subject to average. Business interruption pays the reduction in turnover plus increased cost of working during the indemnity period, measured on gross profit (net profit plus insured standing charges) with savings credited.
Liability
Public liability covers legal liability for accidental third-party bodily injury or property damage occurring during the period. Products liability extends this to goods supplied. Professional indemnity is written claims-made, so the policy in force when the claim is made responds. Employers face both Employees' Compensation Ordinance (Cap. 282) liability and common law claims; EC insurance is compulsory and the required limits scale with the size of the workforce.
Motor
The Motor Vehicles Insurance (Third Party Risks) Ordinance (Cap. 272) makes third-party death and bodily injury cover compulsory; damage to the insured's own vehicle is not compulsory. Policies are third-party only, third-party fire and theft, or comprehensive, with excesses and no-claim discounts. The Motor Insurers' Bureau meets claims from uninsured or untraced drivers.
Travel and personal accident
Travel policies bundle medical and evacuation, cancellation and curtailment, baggage, delay, personal liability and accident cover; typical exclusions are pre-existing illness, adventure sports, war, and losses arising from events known before purchase. Personal accident pays fixed capital sums for death and dismemberment and weekly benefits for temporary disablement, on an accident-only basis: injury by violent, accidental, external and visible means, not sickness.
Worked example
A comprehensively insured driver drives while disqualified and injures a pedestrian. The pedestrian's judgment for bodily injury must still be met from the compulsory third-party cover, because Cap. 272 restricts the insurer's ability to escape statutory liability. The insurer then recovers from the insured under the policy, and the insured's own damage claim is declined for breach of condition and illegal use.
Traps that cost marks
Describing travel medical cover as covering 'any illness'; forgetting PI is claims-made; assuming third-party property damage is compulsory for motor; ignoring the indemnity period in business interruption.