Mega claims following movie production cancellations and delay in releases last year have burnt insurance companies. But a renewed demand for film insurance could see the industry’s annual premiums grow from the current Rs 150-200 crore to around Rs 300 crore. “We are getting almost two proposals a day. There is a huge number of productions that are taking the floor in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, including from over-the-top (OTT) platforms,” said Aatur Thakkar, director of Alliance Insurance Brokers, which arranges for a large chunk of the films to be insured in India. After taking a beating last year on account of mega event cancellations like Wimbledon in the UK and the Olympics in Japan, event insurers globally have got badly burnt. Additionally, the pandemic became an excluded risk immediately after the World Health Organization’s announcement on March 11, 2020.
“While risks arising out of Covid are excluded from insurance treaties, it is possible to get specialized covers from global underwriters under facultative programmes,” said Thakkar. Facultative reinsurance covers provide for a case-to-case acceptance unlike reinsurance treaties where there is a blanket acceptance of all proposals underwritten by a primary insurer in a year.
“We arranged a Rs 140-crore insurance cover for Akshay Kumar-starrer ‘Bell Bottoms’, the first film in India and probably worldwide to go on the floors after the pandemic,” said Thakkar. The movie, produced by Vashu Bhagnani, was shot in a bubble – a term used to describe a situation where interaction is limited to a small cluster of people in a group.
