Great Point offers Covid insurance

London-based investment group Great Point Media (GPM) is to provide a Covid-19 insurance package for the film and television projects in which it invests.

Great Point has partnered with Oxford Risk Management Group to provide Covid-19 coverage and with Reel Media to supply the underlying production insurance.

The company said it now has the capacity to insure US$400m worth of production over the next 12 months.

Any film or TV production that Great Point finances can access the insurance, which it claimed is the first of its kind in the industry.

Areas excluded by insurers since the pandemic began arlier this year, including Covid-19 cast illness, crew and other personnel illness, plus civil authority shutdown, will all be covered by the new product, GPM said.

The Covid-19 insurance will be overseen by Peter A Marshall, MD of DeWitt Stern Entertainment, a risk strategies company.

The Production Program Master Policy is underwritten by Reel Media, the management team that issues film and TV policies backed by Allianz, one of the four largest insurance firms in the world.

The question of which party – commissioner or producer – is responsible for insuring TV productions during the pandemic has been a major sticking point for the industry since filming resumed earlier this year.

“We believe that by offering a total insurance solution along with our finance package, we will not only deliver safer investments for our fund but also savings to each production,” said Robert Halmi, GPM’s chairman.

“Oxford is the perfect partner for our first foray into insurance. They are among the leaders in the captive insurance industry and we look forward to a long and prosperous relationship,” said Jim Reeve, GPM’s chief executive.

Great Point this year announced its first media infrastructure construction project, a major film and TV studio complex in Yonkers, New York State, and US$100m of institutional capital raised to facilitate further project financing activities.

It was founded in 2013 by Robert Halmi and Jim Reeve and specialises in the development, investment, distribution and sales of intellectual property in entertainment media. Since 2013, Great Point Media has financed more than 180 projects and invested over US$600m in the media sector.