What Wimbledon can teach us about insurance

The grass courts. The all-white attire. Henman Hill.

Close your eyes and you can almost picture Federer v Djokovic on Centre Court.

Unfortunately, imagining the Wimbledon final was as close as anyone came to actually seeing it in 2020.  Like many events, the tournament was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many events suffered major financial losses due to these cancellations. The South by Southwest (SXSW) music and film festival lost “tens of millions” while losing out on an event that reportedly brought in over $350 million to the city of Austin, Texas in 2019.

The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), which puts on the Wimbledon tennis tournament, was much more fortunate.

Why? Just one word.

Insurance.

You see, the AELTC had the foresight to purchase a pandemic insurance policy after the 2003 SARS outbreak. The policy was not cheap, costing about $1.8 million annually in premium.

After the cancellation of the tournament, the policy paid off to the tune of almost $215 million (US$) (up from initial estimates of $142 million), enabling the AELTC to offset the majority of its financial losses from the cancellation.

This is the beauty of insurance. While you hope you never need it, it does provide financial relief at the time you need it the most.

While you probably will never need pandemic (or volcano) insurance, chances are that you will require some form of insurance, be it life insurance or living benefits (disability or critical illness).

Insurance can be confusing and difficult for the average person to navigate. There are many different types of insurance and figuring out which solution is best for you can be overwhelming.

Fortunately, we are here to help. This is the first article in our ongoing insurance education series here on the blog.

Is term insurance enough or should I go with the whole life policy that my neighbour's brother keeps trying to sell me?

Do I really need to do a Needs Analysis or can I just pick a nice round number that sounds like it's enough? 

If I already have a Long-term Disability policy, do I really need Critical Illness insurance? Don't they cover the same thing?

These are just some of the questions that we will address over the coming weeks.

We will go in depth on the different types of insurance that you might need: life, disability, critical illness and health + travel. We'll discuss common myths about insurance and try to make a complex topic much easier to understand.

Please join us.