Tis the Season – What Can I Do to Ensure the Best Result on My Solicitor’s Professional Indemnity Renewal?

It’s that time of year again… 1st of October marks the date when a large number of law firms in England and Wales will be renewing their Solicitor Professional Indemnity. This can be a stressful and drawn-out process, with your PI premium often being one of the biggest (if not the biggest) overheads to hit your books every year. Here are some pointers to make this process as easy as possible for you.

Move Early

Time can be your friend here. By getting in your submission early you give yourself a buffer, both externally to hear back from your broker or insurer, but also for yourself, to give you more time to decide how you want to proceed and explore options. You want to avoid the last-minute rush if at all possible, if for no other reason than to avoid the stress caused by leaving it too late!

This feeling is also reflected for your broker and insurer too. As a Solicitors’ Professional Indemnity season renewal day looms closer and closer, at this very busy period for those in the industry, you can often expect service levels to drop. Everyone simply has more on their respective plates during the last few weeks of the renewal season, with a lot of volume moving around between brokers and insurers. This can lead to increased response times and a general dip in service in general, exactly when deadlines are short, tensions are high and you need a quick reply!

Even worse, some insurers have a limited amount of ‘capacity’ they are allowed to offer during a renewal season, meaning they literally cannot quote any more once this has been filled. Obviously, if you are providing your information too late there’s every chance you may have already missed the boat here and will not get a desired alternative from an insurer.
Best way to avoid all this stress? Get your submission in early!

Get the Right Info in First Time

Similar to moving early, you want to make your submission as straight forward as possible for your broker and insurer. If your submission is coming in with missing information, there’s the chance that this could potentially push you down the list and draw out the process before you have a quote in front of you. This will put you on the back foot. Some of the required info may also be difficult for you to retrieve, again potentially setting back the whole process by weeks as you get this together and then forward it back to the insurer.

A lack of information may put off busy new insurers altogether, meaning you don’t see a quote from them at all, again counting yourself out of a viable alternative option.

Talk to your broker early to make sure you are getting together all the info you need for renewal in one go.
This will make their role in placing your policy easier for them.

Are any insurers of interest asking for extra forms that you can fill out now? Do you need to provide your audited accounts? Risk Management information? Details on your cyber policy? Of course, there may be some unexpected questions arising from the insurer that the broker was not anticipating, but you can at least save yourself some time by getting the sufficient level of relevant info for your broker in the first pass.

Know the Market

Do your homework! There are plenty of articles available from subject matter experts on the way the Solicitors Professional indemnity market is moving. These range from brokers discussing the market in general, to lawyers discussing the regulatory environment to insurers discussing claims trends.

What can your broker tell you about this or, even better, your insurer directly (if you can get the chance to meet them)? What can they tell you about insurer trends or any new entrants to the product? Does any of this spark your interest or present any options you’d like to discuss with your broker? Do you see anything that may present an issue for your firm and the work you conduct? How will your broker address these potential challenges?

Consider Your Options

You can agree a general action plan with your broker before your renewal. You can discuss how you would like to proceed in a number of theoretical scenarios so that you both know the approach you (and, by extension, your broker) would take.

For example, would you like to see what premium saving you would be able to gain by increasing your excess, or explore an 18-month option? Can you gain quotes for those options with your incumbent insurer? If not, why not?
Is there a renewal pricing increase level that will trigger you exploring other insurers? If so, which ones and why?

This can be a very useful exercise to undertake early on with your broker to ensure you can proceed to the next step as the season develops, rather than organising time to deliberate next steps at every single stage.

See How Others Got On

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