Celebritity Swine Flu Insurance!

Celebrities are starting to insure themselves for the event they they contract Swine Flu!  Katherine Jenkins has set the trend with a policy that insures her for £1million for losses associated with the contraction of the virus.

It is not uncommon for celebrities to be insured by concert promoters for a number of potential risks, including death, causing concert programmes to be cancelled.  In the case of Michael Jackson, his policy had an exclusion policy for death if blood results showed illegal drugs.

Illnesses are often covered in such contracts but not pandemic illnesses, hence the need for a swine flu clause.

Soldiers Insuring Personal Injury

More soldiers are sorting out their own insurance according to Channel 4 news.  The policies are designed to supplement and payments made by the armed forces compensation scheme which has been criticised and is under current review.

AIG runs the biggest UK scheme known as PAX and insures tens of thousands of servicemen.  There have been significant claims made against some of the compensation schemes.

Soldiers can also insure their personall accident cover across multiple schemes.

Aviva doing well

Shares in Aviva rose over 5% after their latest results were better than expected.  Aviva made £1.68bn an increase on the previous years related performance of £1.51bn.

Despite the profit performance, the divident is being slashed.

Aviva is outperforming many major rivals with these latest stats.

Michael Jacksons Insurance Excluded Drug Use

The insurance policy taken out by Michael Jacksons concert organisers, AEG live, had a clause excluded losses following the possession or taking of illicit drugs.

While the policy would be set to pay out a significant sum to protect the policyholders losses following Michael Jacksons sudden death, if the autopsy results show that illicit drugs were present in Michaels Jacksons blood then the claim will not be valid.

AEG live are unikely to end up out of pocket too much though.  The Jackson estate is to pay AEG live its costs before it retains income from merchandising and Sony are in dicsussion over the distribution of Michaels last rehearsal footage taken shortly before his death.

Unoccupied Property

Many insurance policies for residential and commercial property stipulate that the property has to be occupied for a certain amount of time.  Unoccupied property represents a bigger risk to insurers who are worried about total loss claims such as flood and fire. 

If your property is left uninsured for longer periods of time then you risk invalidating your insurance completely.

This is why there are specailist insurance policies for landlords and european holiday home insurance.  If you need insurance for unoccupied property, make sure you check the terms and conditions of the policy, including any warranties the insurers make.