Hiscox offers football injury insurance

Hiscox and Avoca Elite Sports (AES) have teamed up to offer a new product for European football clubs, which covers financial loss as a result of player injury.

MAXI covers clubs against a fall in a player’s agreed transfer value resulting from serious injury or illness, and for potential lost revenues as a result of a prolonged absence from playing.

This is said to be the first product that covers these two aspects of financial loss, instead of just paying out to cover player wages and a lump-sum if a player has to retire through injury.

Hiscox head of alternative distribution division Guillaume Bonnissent said: “Football clubs are among the very few businesses whose key assets, on which they rely for their success, are exposed to harm on a weekly basis.

“Each Saturday, they send teams onto the pitch that are worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pounds, without knowing whether they will return in one piece. Until now clubs haven’t had the ability to comprehensively protect these expensive assets in the same way that other businesses can protect their balance sheets.”

And Hiscox and AES said the new product could help protect clubs’ investments in playing staff, something which has come under further strain as a result of the Financial Fair Play rules that aim to stop excessive spending and cut football club debt.

AES consultant, former head of financial regulation at the Football Association and former chief executive of Portsmouth FC David Lampitt said: “With the advent of Financial Fair Play, clubs are going to be far more restricted in their ability to inject cash into their squads to mitigate the loss of key players.

“Dealing with those changing circumstances is a must for all clubs. What’s good about this product is that it provides a new way of protecting clubs from potentially significant financial shocks. It also reflects an increasingly professional approach to financial risk management being taken in football.”