By Phil Zinkewicz .

Where were you when the lights went out? That was a question often asked in the late 1960s and one which quickly became a colloquialism after a movie was made to describe the shenanigans that took place during the famous New York City blackout of the middle of that decade.

Another question which might have been asked among insurance agents and executives was: Does business interruption cover the losses that came about because of the blackout? The answer back then might be significantly different than the answer now.

Business interruption insurance indemnifies business firms for loss of income during the period required to restore to useful condition property damaged by an insured peril. It pays the expenses that continue and the profits that would have been earned during a period of interruption.

But, according to Joseph F. Mangan, currently a consultant and freelance journalist but previously an executive with the Insurance Services Office and A.M. Best, independent agents and brokers should be aware that BI today can be a good deal trickier than it was a decade ago. "Business interruption is a coverage that underwriters have always been willing to offer, but the forms specifically designed for that purpose have disappeared. Nobody bought the coverage, so the industry discontinued the forms. Like so many other things that happened during the policy simplification during the middle and late 1980s, the coverage just disappeared into the forms with no clear mechanism for providing it."

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