If conveyancing is a high proportion of your firm's fee income, you already know what your PI insurer thinks of it. Conveyancing-heavy firms have historically faced one of the more challenging segments of the Participating Insurer market in solicitors PI, with higher premium rates and more detailed underwriting. The 2025-26 market has softened materially in this segment, though, and the position is meaningfully better than it was during the 2019-2022 hard cycle.
This article explains why conveyancing is rated the way it is, what you can do about it, what to expect at renewal, and where the truly difficult cases fit in the current market.
It complements the full Solicitors PI Guide and the Solicitors sector page.
Why conveyancing is rated heavily
Conveyancing is consistently identified by the SRA, the Law Society, and SIF claims data as one of the largest sources of solicitors PI claims by both volume and value. SIF data shows conveyancing accounting for around 74% of post-six-year claims by value and 76% by number since 2000. The structural reasons:
Transaction-volume risk. A typical conveyancing practice processes hundreds of transactions per year, each involving a separate matter, separate documents, and separate decisions. The volume alone produces a wider exposure surface than transactional commercial work.
Cyber-enabled and identity fraud exposure. Conveyancing involves moving substantial sums of money. Identity fraud (where a fraudster impersonates a vendor or a buyer) and "Friday afternoon fraud" (where the firm's email is compromised and completion funds are redirected to a fraudulent account) have been persistent sources of severe claims, with the loss potentially equal to the full transaction value.
Lender-handbook compliance. Acting for a lender adds a separate compliance obligation under the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook. Failures to comply with the Handbook (incentive disclosure, sub-sale flags, second-mortgage notification) produce claims even where the underlying transaction completed correctly.
Title-issue risk. Failure to identify or report on title issues (missed easements, unregistered rights of way, restrictive covenants, charges not removed before completion) can produce significant claims where the buyer's intended use of the property is impaired.
New-build defect exposure. Conveyancing on new-build properties can produce claims about lease structure, ground rent escalation, service charge provisions, and building safety issues. The Building Safety Act 2022 extended limitation periods under the Defective Premises Act materially: 30 years retrospectively for claims accruing before 28 June 2022, 15 years prospectively for claims accruing after. That has extended insurer tail risk substantially.
Claim-tail length. Conveyancing claims often emerge years after completion. A defect that was not apparent at handover surfaces during a later survey, a fraud claim emerges when the property is re-sold, a title issue arises when the new owner tries to develop. The claims tail is longer than for some other work types, which is why SIF post-six-year claims are so dominated by conveyancing.
The cumulative effect: insurers price conveyancing higher because their loss experience tells them to.
What this means for premium in 2025-26
The market reality has shifted materially. Howden's April 2026 PII renewal review reports that "even firms with a significant proportion of conveyancing work had a choice of insurer options" at the 1 April 2026 renewal. One insurer cited in the same review moved its tolerance from 5% conveyancing to 50% conveyancing over the last 18 months. The structural rating challenges remain (conveyancing is still rated higher than commercial work, all else equal) but the panel willing to consider conveyancing-heavy firms has expanded significantly.
Pure conveyancing firms (90%+ of fees from conveyancing). Some Participating Insurers will not write. Among those that do, premium as a percentage of fee income is materially higher than the firm-wide average, and specific exclusions on certain transaction types (cladding-affected leasehold, high-rise new-build) are common.
Mixed firms with significant conveyancing (30-60% of fees). Premium reflects the conveyancing component but the diversification softens the rate. The majority of major insurers will quote, and in the current market most clients have a choice of insurer.
Firms with limited conveyancing (under 20% of fees). Conveyancing has limited rating impact; the firm is rated primarily on its other work.
A note on the harder market: the segment that currently attracts the least insurer interest is no longer pure conveyancing but high-volume consumer claims (housing disrepair, motor finance commission, data breach, diesel emissions). The SSB Law collapse and the SRA's 2025 thematic review of high-volume consumer claims have made that segment the focal point of insurer caution. Conveyancing-heavy firms have moved off the "hardest market" position they occupied in 2019-2022.
What you can actually do
Five practical levers, in rough order of impact.
1. Anti-fraud procedures (and the documentation of them)
Cyber-enabled fraud and identity fraud are material categories of conveyancing claims, both in frequency and severity. Insurers reward firms that can demonstrate robust procedures:
- Verification at first contact. Identity checks before any substantive engagement, not after.
- Independent verification of vendor authority. Confirming the vendor's authority to sell from independent sources, not just from documents the vendor provides.
- Source-of-funds and source-of-wealth checks that comply with current AML guidance.
- Bank-account verification. Confirming the destination account for completion funds independently before transfer; treating any late change of bank details as a fraud red flag.
- Cyber security around email. The volume of business email compromise attacks targeting conveyancing is significant; insurers expect specific protections (MFA, monitoring of outbound rules, training on phishing).
A one-page summary of your firm's anti-fraud procedures, attached to the renewal proposal, materially affects how insurers see the risk.
2. File-opening protocols
A formal file-opening checklist that ensures every conveyancing matter starts with the same information collected to the same standard is a basic insurance hygiene measure. Most firms have this informally; insurers want to see it documented.
3. Partner-level oversight on higher-risk matters
High-value transactions, new-build leases, cladding-affected properties, transactions involving lender Handbook complexity: these benefit from second-partner sign-off at key stages. Demonstrating that this happens (with evidence in the form of meeting minutes, file notes, or workflow records) softens the underwriter's view.
4. Claims history presentation
If you have had conveyancing claims in the look-back window, how you present them matters. The same claim history with a clear narrative (what happened, what was paid, what the firm did in response) produces different underwriting outcomes than a row of dates and amounts. See What drives solicitors PI premium for more on this.
5. Excess level
If your cash position allows it, raising the excess on the primary policy (particularly the conveyancing-specific excess if your wording has one) can materially reduce premium. The trade-off is that you absorb more of any single claim within the higher deductible.
What if I can't get cover at renewal?
A correction worth making, because old guides still circulate on this point: the SRA's Assigned Risks Pool (ARP) no longer exists. It was abolished from 30 September 2013. There is no SRA-backed insurer of last resort.
The current mechanism for a firm that cannot get renewal cover is the Extended Policy Period (EPP):
- The firm's existing PI insurer is required to extend cover for up to 90 days from the policy expiry date.
- The first 30 days is the Extended Indemnity Period (EIP). The firm can continue trading normally while seeking replacement cover.
- The next 60 days is the Cessation Period. The firm cannot take on new work and must work towards orderly closure of any existing instructions.
- If replacement cover is not in place by the end of the 90 days, the firm must cease.
This is not a backstop. It is a 90-day window in which the firm either secures cover or closes. Firms that find themselves in the cessation period without a credible plan to secure cover should engage with the SRA and their broker immediately.
What this means in practice for conveyancing-heavy firms. The 2025-26 market has materially eased capacity constraints. Most conveyancing-heavy firms now have viable insurer options. The firms genuinely at risk of running out of capacity are typically those with recent severe claims, a history of regulatory findings, or material exposure to high-volume consumer claims work. If you are in that position, the right first port of call is a broker with active relationships across the Participating Insurer panel; the wrong first port of call is to bind cover with a non-Participating Insurer, which would be a breach of the SRA Indemnity Insurance Rules.
What's likely to change in 2026 and beyond
Two countervailing pressures.
More capacity. The Participating Insurer count at 52 (2025/26) is the highest ever, double the 26 at the start of the 2019 hard market. New entrants in 2024-25 (Alchemy Underwriting, Fortegra, Westfield) have added to existing capacity. Rate softening continued through the 1 April 2026 renewal. If this capacity persists, conveyancing-heavy firms should continue to see competitive options.
Longer tail risk. The Building Safety Act 2022 extension of limitation periods, particularly the 30-year retrospective extension for s.1 Defective Premises Act claims on dwellings, has materially extended insurer tail risk for new-build and refurbishment conveyancing. That argues for premium not to fall too far for the conveyancing segment specifically.
Net direction: better than 2019-2022 by a wide margin; not expected to converge fully with commercial-work pricing; insurer attention is shifting toward high-volume consumer claims as the hardest segment.
How Apex helps
Apex regularly handles solicitors PI for conveyancing-heavy firms across the South West and beyond. We:
- Actively track which Participating Insurers are currently appetite-positive for conveyancing
- Help firms compile renewal submissions in the format insurers respond to
- Read wordings, not just quotes (important because conveyancing-specific exclusions and excess structures hide in policy detail)
- Advocate on claims that arise, particularly identity-fraud and cyber-enabled-fraud claims where coverage decisions can be contested
If your conveyancing renewal feels harder than it should, upload your current Statement of Fact and existing policy schedule to proposal.apexinsurancebrokers.co.uk. Your named broker will be in touch.