Engineering, Liability, and Miscellaneous Insurance Claims
This domain tests the more technical lines where policy triggers and exclusions do real work: construction and erection all risks, machinery breakdown, and liability covers such as public, product and professional indemnity.
Engineering covers
- CAR/EAR covers damage to the works and third-party liability during construction or erection; extensions cover maintenance periods, testing and commissioning.
- The classic exclusion removes the cost of rectifying the defect itself (design error, bad workmanship) but normally leaves resulting damage to other insured property covered - read the wording carefully.
- Machinery breakdown responds to sudden and unforeseen mechanical or electrical failure, not wear and tear, gradual deterioration or faulty maintenance. Boiler explosion may sit under a separate section.
Liability covers
- Occurrence-based policies respond to injury or damage happening in the period; claims-made policies respond to the claim being made and notified in the period, subject to a retroactive date.
- Check the trigger, retroactive date, aggregate limit, defence costs (inside or outside the limit), and the meaning of "damage" - many policies exclude pure financial loss.
Worked example
A professional indemnity policy written on a claims-made basis has a 2019 retroactive date. The negligent act occurred in 2018, the claim is made in 2021. Reasoning: the act predates the retroactive date, so no cover, even though the claim was notified during the policy period.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating a CAR defect exclusion as barring all resulting damage.
- Confusing occurrence and claims-made triggers.
- Overlooking a per-occurrence versus aggregate limit.
- Ignoring defence costs erosion of the limit.