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HIGHLIGHTS
ENTERTAINMENT CLAIMS
No business like show business For claims adjusters in the entertainment field, the pandemic hit TV and film producers like a catastrophic event. Here’s what it took for adjusters to survive the deluge…
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ometime during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Canadian TV production made a call to their insurance adjuster with an unusual claim — they didn’t know what to do with their live animals. They had bred the animals specifically for their TV production, which had now been disrupted because of a government lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19. “That production was forced to shut down because of COVID and they were stuck with animals and unable to return them to their original breeder,” according to Frederick Amirizian, a Crawford & Company (Canada) insurance adjuster and film and entertainment subject matter expert. “They had to feed them, 34
February/March 2021 | Canadian Underwriter
B Y D AV I D G A M B R I L L , Editor-in-Chief
[and] keep someone on location to make sure they were okay.” Once COVID lockdowns were lifted, the filming crew worked as quickly as possible to make sure that they could continue to use the animals, which incurred major and unexpected costs. Time was of the essence, as Amirizian recounts: “The production needed cubs, but obviously the animals [didn’t] stop growing [during the lockdown].” In the Canadian entertainment industry, time is money. According to the Canadian Media Producers Association, as cited in Crawford & Company (Canada)’s recent white paper, Entertainment Contingency Claims, the Canadian film and television production generated nearly $9 billion in production
volume and approximately 179,000 jobs. Film and television production is a round-the-clock, deadline-driven business. It is tied heavily to rental and equipment costs, labour costs, special effects work, and marketing. Any production delays, often the result of actors falling ill or faulty equipment, typically drive insured losses in show biz. And those entertainment losses can be on an epic scale. And so, when COVID-19 shutdown orders literally became show-stoppers, insurance adjusters were inundated with entertainment industry claims. Amirizian says he received the same number of claims in one month as he typically saw in an entire year. For entertainment adjusters, it was the equivalent of adjusting a catastrophic event.
