Most surveyors have never read their PI wording cover to cover, and most underwriters quietly assume that is still true at renewal.
For a small or mid-sized surveying practice, the RICS minimum approved PI wording can read as something written for someone else — drafted for insurers and regulators, mediated by brokers, signed off without scrutiny. This guide is the kitchen-table version. It walks a partner of a 5-partner firm through what the wording actually says, how to read the schedule, what a fire safety endorsement looks like in real drafting, and how RICS-listed PI providers differ from non-listed insurers offering apparently similar cover. It is the companion to our structural overview of the RICS Minimum Approved Wording — read the structural piece for the formal architecture; read this one to know what to do with it.
A typical mid-sized surveying firm — five equity partners, twenty staff, £1.6m fee income — will receive a renewal pack each year containing a market presentation, two or three quotation summaries, and a recommended schedule with the renewing insurer’s policy wording attached. The schedule is the document that matters. Reading it takes about an hour and runs in four passes:
The first pass is structural. Confirm that the wording is described as the “RICS Minimum Approved Wording (current edition)” or words to that effect. If the document says “based on RICS minimum wording” or “RICS-compliant”, that is a warning sign — it should be the wording itself, not a derivative. Confirm the insurer is on the published list of qualifying insurers as at the renewal date.
The second pass is the headline figures: limit of indemnity, deductible, defence costs treatment, retroactive date, expiry date. A firm should be able to recite all five from memory by the end of the renewal meeting. The limit will be expressed as “each and every claim” on the primary layer; the deductible will typically be per claim, not aggregate, and will not erode the limit. Defence costs will be in addition to the limit on the primary layer for most firms (subject to the small-firm exception in the wording).
The third pass is endorsements. This is where insurers depart from the RICS template. The fire safety endorsement, the cladding exclusion, the cyber exclusion or carve-back, any survey condition precedents, and any panel-specific terms all sit in this section. Each is a negotiable point at renewal.
The fourth pass is conditions and notification. Notification is the single most important operational clause in any claims-made policy. The wording will require notification of any “claim or circumstance” as soon as reasonably practicable during the period of insurance. The firm needs a documented internal procedure that captures circumstances at the same speed.
The RICS minimum wording’s insuring clause responds to “any civil liability incurred in connection with the practice of surveying services” — a deliberately broad formula. It will cover negligence claims, breach of warranty of authority, breach of confidentiality, defamation in connection with professional work, and infringement of intellectual property in deliverables. It does not respond to fines, penalties, deliberate dishonesty by the firm (though it will protect the innocent partners against the dishonesty of a rogue colleague, with subrogation), or contractual liabilities the firm has voluntarily assumed beyond what reasonable professional duty would impose.
The fire safety endorsement is the most consequential variable. In practice the market has settled into three broad families of drafting:
Reading which family the firm’s endorsement falls into is a five-minute exercise once the right paragraph is found. Many brokers will not have done it explicitly in the renewal presentation.
The aggregation clause — “one claim or series of claims arising from one originating cause or source” — controls how multiple instructions tied to the same root cause are treated. This is the language the Supreme Court considered in AIG Europe Ltd v Woodman [2017] UKSC 18 and which the Court of Appeal addressed in Spire Healthcare Ltd v Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Plc [2022] EWCA Civ 17. For a panel valuer or a project monitor on a series of similar instructions, this clause is the single most important commercial question on the policy.
A five-partner residential and commercial surveying practice with £1.6m fee income is presented with a renewal at £24,000 net premium on a £2m each-and-every limit, RICS minimum wording, with a fire safety endorsement described in the schedule simply as “Fire Safety Exclusion (Endorsement 4) applies”. The senior partner asks the broker for Endorsement 4’s wording. It excludes “any claim arising directly or indirectly from fire safety, combustibility, or external wall systems on any building”.
The firm’s book is 70% commercial valuation and building survey, and 30% residential, including ten active project monitoring instructions on residential blocks (none over 18 metres, none within the Higher-Risk Buildings regime). The broker negotiates a narrower endorsement carved back to “relevant buildings” only, on the basis that the exposure outside that regime is not what the insurer is pricing for. The narrowed endorsement is agreed for an additional £1,800 in premium. Three years later a claim arises on a 15-metre residential block. The narrowed endorsement preserves cover; the original would have excluded the claim entirely.
Apex’s view: The single biggest gap we see between what a surveying firm thinks it has bought and what it actually has bought is in the fire safety endorsement. Brokers and insurers describe the cover in shorthand — “RICS minimum wording with fire safety exclusion” — that hides material differences in scope. A 15-minute conversation about which family of endorsement the firm is buying, with the wording in front of both parties, is worth more than any other piece of renewal work. If a firm cannot answer the question “exactly which fire safety claims are excluded?”, neither can its claims solicitor when something goes wrong.
Apex Insurance Brokers serves UK professional services firms and commercial businesses. Call 0117 325 0027, email hello@apexinsurancebrokers.co.uk, or request a quotation.
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