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Protect your business: the essential guide to business interruption planning and review

Protect your business with a business interruption insurance review. Learn how BI planning, business continuity, and cover checks can reduce costly gaps.
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By Robyn Beaman , 

Pre-Loss Business Interruption Practice Leader

02/07/2026 · 7 minute read

Business interruption (BI) can stop your operations in their tracks. Many things can slash business income while additional costs continue, including:

  • Physical damage
  • Supplier failure
  • Cyber attack
  • Natural disasters
  • Denial of access.

Many organisations only discover gaps in their insurance policy at the worst possible
moment — during a claim. If you're responsible for protecting your business, you should treat BI planning and cover review as a recurring activity. Review your exposure and insurance at least annually and whenever you make material changes to:

  • Business premises
  • Products
  • Systems
  • Business processes
  • Suppliers.

Strong business continuity management systems can help organisations manage disruption, protect critical business functions, and continue operating when incidents occur.

Why this matters to you

A policy may appear comprehensive, but certain factors can materially reduce the value of a claim, including:

  • Subtle wording
  • An inappropriate basis of settlement
  • An incorrect declared value (DV)
  • An inadequate indemnity period.

In practice, we frequently see declared values that don't reflect the true exposure. This results in underinsurance and lower settlements when business interruption losses occur. That shortfall often relates to the DV for gross profit, gross revenue or other bases rather than the overall policy limit. For any company that relies on stable revenue streams, even a small gap in cover can lead to:

  • Lost income
  • Unexpected additional expenses
  • Pressure on cash flow when the business needs money to recover.

Common gaps we see

Policies may be written on gross profit, gross revenue, increased Costs of Working (ICOW/AICOW) or other bases. If the chosen basis does not match how your business would be affected after a loss, there will be a gap in cover.

Sums insured are often based on single-year snapshots, incomplete data or figures that haven’t been adjusted for growth, seasonality, work-in-progress or inflation.

The indemnity period starts at the date of the loss and should continue until the business performance returns to the levels expected before the loss. Twelve months is often insufficient; other factors can extend recovery time and affect your recovery time objective, such as:

  • Bespoke machinery
  • Specialist suppliers
  • Complex rebuilds
  • A power outage
  • Delays awaiting local authority planning consent.

Incorrectly treating costs as uninsured working expenses can lead to wrong gross profit declarations and inappropriate sub-limits.

We commonly see wording and modelling that focuses narrowly on Increased Costs of Working (ICOW) without distinguishing Additional Increased Costs of Working (AICOW). AICOW is advantageous as it's not directly linked to mitigating a loss of revenue. It includes costs associated with maintaining business operations as close to normal as possible, including additional expenses linked to temporary solutions.

Scenarios outside the policyholder’s direct control are sometimes excluded or subject to restrictive sub-limits, including:

  • Denial of access
  • Supplier failure
  • Civil authority action
  • Utility interruptions.

Some policies may also fail to provide cover for events such as communicable diseases or mandated closures where premises must close temporarily.

For organisations with multiple locations or shared services, parts of the business may rely on other sites or third parties. These dependencies are often overlooked, especially where key staff, specialist equipment, data, or core resources are concentrated off site.

How planning and regular reviews change outcomes

BI planning is not a one-off task. Your operational footprint evolves — new premises, products, systems and suppliers change the scale and nature of exposures. Regular reviews (at least annually and following material change) keep your insurance aligned with the business. They also make sure that your recovery assumptions are realistic, reducing the risk of a material shortfall when a claim arises. A robust contingency plan helps organisations to:

  • Identify potential threats
  • Understand the potential consequences
  • Protect key functions before an interruption happens.

Plans supported by a disaster recovery plan and clear business continuity plan outlines are particularly effective. This is especially important for small businesses, who often have fewer fallback options.

Key practical steps to take now

Use current, time-phased financial data that captures seasonality, growth and work-in-progress. Utilise the declared value uplift to take into account unforeseen growth during the indemnity period.

Consider realistic reinstatement times and where delays may arise (specialist contractors, planning permissions, listed-building constraints, or local authority planning consent). Include an allowance for the time it takes to recover revenues to pre-loss levels.

Identify critical suppliers, points of failure and shared infrastructure. Quantify the financial impact of third-party interruption and consider supply-chain resilience measures.

Produce Maximum Foreseeable Loss (MFL) and/or Estimated Maximum Loss (EML) models to quantify potential exposure under different loss scenarios.

Check key definitions (for example, “gross profit”, “uninsured working expenses”), trends clauses and policy triggers to identify ambiguity and restrictive terms.

In addition, carry out a risk assessment and business impact analysis to determine which critical business functions must be restored first. Consider what backup plan is needed for property, technology, suppliers, and employees. Assess whether your current cover would pay for additional costs incurred to keep the organisation running.

Sector-specific considerations

Different sectors face different BI drivers:

  • Manufacturing needs detailed supply-chain and lead-time analysis.
  • Retail must reflect seasonal peaks and distribution channels.
  • Professional services should check for loss of fee income or project delays.
  • Hospitality should consider licence reapproval, reputation recovery and event-related exposures.

Tailoring your approach to sector specifics makes cover both relevant and proportionate. The right range of continuity and insurance measures will depend on how the company relies on locations, technology, suppliers, and people to deliver services from its business premises.

What specialists add

Accurate BI protection depends on quality data and realistic recovery assumptions. Forensic financial analysis, dependency mapping, scenario modelling and claims-readiness work are specialist activities. Brokers can secure market access and negotiate terms, but the accuracy of cover comes from robust analysis and realistic modelling. Specialists also provide guidance on the importance of aligning insurance with operational reality. This means clarifying who has responsibility for recovery actions and helping organisations manage exposure before and after a loss. This can improve discussions with the insurer and strengthen confidence that the policy will respond as intended.

Next steps you can take today

Start with a focused review:

  1. Check your declared values and basis of cover
  2. Reassess your indemnity period
  3. Map your key dependencies
  4. Test your BCP against realistic scenarios and align it with your disaster recovery plan.
  5. If time is limited, begin with a short audit of your financial inputs and a basic supplier dependency map.

These often reveal the largest gaps and help reduce potential business interruption losses.

Where appropriate, consider Marsh’s Business Interruption Insurance Review (BIIR), delivered by our Forensic Accounting & Claims Services (FACS) team. The BIIR combines forensic financial analysis, dependency mapping and policy wording review. We identify gaps in declared values, indemnity periods and basis of settlement to produce a focused findings report. This report will provide you with actionable recommendations to support placement and claims preparedness. Arrange a BIIR with your Marsh service team.

Don’t wait for a claim to test your cover. A timely review gives you confidence that, if the worst happens, you can recover swiftly, minimize business interruption losses, and protect what matters most — your people, your customers and your business.

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