Warranty & Indemnity Insurance in the COVID Era

Mark Everiss (Partner, Cooley (UK) LLP, London) |

Introduction

Warranty & Indemnity Insurance1 has been a popular and effective tool in facilitating and supporting transactions for a number of years. COVID has, of course, affected every aspect of our lives over the last two years. Similarly, COVID has affected every transaction since the beginning of 2020 to some extent. In many cases its effect has been significant and in some, particularly in the early days of the pandemic, the risks involved were too great for the deals to proceed.

However, after an initial slowdown in Q2 2020 as the business world came to terms with new ways of working and doing deals, deal volumes and cumulative value surged in the final six months of 2020. In 2021, global M&A deals have hit a new record high, both in terms of deal numbers and cumulative value. An abundance of capital, low