Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FRN 724952. Companies House 07014570. Cover availability and terms depend on insurer underwriting at the time of quotation.
This page is written for the people building software and selling technology services across Bristol, Bath, Cheltenham, Cardiff and the wider South West. SaaS founders coming out of seed into Series A. Managed Service Providers running client estates. App developers, cybersecurity consultants and pen-testers operating in the orbit of the Cheltenham cyber cluster. IT contractors weighing IR35. Cloud architecture partners on AWS, Azure and GCP migrations. DevOps consultancies, data and AI engineering teams, and the tech-enabled vertical players doing martech, fintech, healthtech, edtech and regtech.
The claim we see most often is not glamorous. Code goes into production with a known CVE. A client downloads a ransomware payload through a service the MSP manages. A migration goes over deadline and the contract has a liquidated damages clause. A junior engineer pushes credentials to a public repo. An AI feature gives wrong financial advice to an end user. A US customer alleges a data breach and the litigation spins up fast. Generic SME cover, rated on turnover alone, was not built for this. The integrated tech product — Combined Professional Indemnity, Cyber Liability and Tech E&O, written by carriers who understand software risk — was.
What IT services and tech firms insurance is
There is no single product called "IT insurance" in the UK market. What experienced tech brokers place is a stack — usually built around an integrated PI/Cyber/Tech E&O policy written by a carrier with a genuine tech book, alongside a Combined Liability or Office Combined package for the physical and employment exposures, and selective additions for D&O, EPLI, Crime and IP infringement as the business scales.
The off-the-shelf SME market — Hiscox 606, Aviva Fast Trade, the smaller packaged cyber products — works for very early-stage operators. A solo developer turning over thirty or forty thousand, with no enterprise clients and no US revenue, can buy a packaged product online and be reasonably served. The model breaks down quickly. Once a SaaS signs an enterprise client with a Data Processing Addendum and contractual indemnities, once an MSP takes on a regulated client, once an agency ships production code under a fixed-price contract, once headcount passes ten and EL claims become a real tail risk, the packaged product stops being fit for purpose.
A broker matters for three reasons. The best tech carriers — Beazley, CFC, Coalition, Hiscox Tech, Tokio Marine HCC, Travelers Tech, AIG, Markel Tech — operate intermediary-only above the smallest packaged book. The wordings vary enormously: two policies marketed as "Cyber and Tech E&O £2m" can have radically different ransomware sub-limits, betterment terms, dependent system failure triggers and breach response panels. And when a claim happens, having a broker who has placed the cover and knows how to push back on a coverage position is the entire point of paying premium.
The covers you actually need
Most tech businesses we place fall into one of three sizes: under fifteen heads (founder/early-team), fifteen to fifty (post-Series A scaleup), and fifty-plus (later-stage and established consultancy). The cover stack shifts as you move up.
Combined Professional Indemnity, Cyber Liability and Tech E&O
The core product for almost every tech business above hobbyist scale. The market has moved decisively toward integrated wordings in the last five years. A modern policy from Beazley, CFC, Coalition, Hiscox Tech, Tokio Marine HCC, Travelers Tech, AIG or Markel Tech will typically cover, on a single retroactive date and a single limit:
- Failure to perform contracted technology services — the classic PI trigger, plus Tech E&O for software defects, missed milestones, defective architecture
- First-party cyber — ransomware ransom payment where lawful and panel-approved, business interruption from a cyber event (with a waiting period, typically eight to twelve hours), restoration of data, dependent system failure (cover for outages caused by an upstream provider — AWS, Azure, a SaaS dependency), breach notification costs, breach coaches, IT forensics, PR support
- Third-party cyber — privacy claims, regulatory defence (the ICO under UK GDPR, sector regulators, US state attorneys general where applicable), media liability, PCI DSS fines and assessments where insurable
- Crime and Funds Transfer Fraud — invoice manipulation, CEO fraud, business email compromise. A separate sub-limit on most wordings, frequently inadequate at default levels
Limits we typically recommend: £1m for a very small operator, £2m–£5m for a scaleup with enterprise clients, £10m and above for established SaaS or MSPs with regulated-industry customers, large contract values or US revenue. Most enterprise software contracts now require £5m PI/Cyber minimum, often £10m.
Premium drivers, in rough order of weight: turnover and ARR, headcount, US client share (US revenue drives litigation exposure aggressively), regulated-industry client share, security controls (MFA, EDR, immutable backups, vulnerability scanning, patch management), incident history, AI/ML exposure, and open-source usage.
What to watch in the wording: the ransomware sub-limit (often inner-limited), the dependent system failure trigger, the contractual liability extension (whether the policy follows your customer contracts or carves out liquidated damages), the betterment position, territorial scope (US/Canada is a separate question), the breach response panel, and the retroactive date for prior acts.
Crime, Funds Transfer Fraud and Social Engineering
Bolted on to or carved out of the Cyber policy on most wordings. This is the cover that pays when finance wires money to a fraudulent account on the strength of a spoofed CEO email or a manipulated invoice from a real supplier whose mailbox was compromised. We push for a meaningful sub-limit — at least £250,000 for any business with regular outbound payments, more for those with high-value supplier relationships. Banks rarely refund these losses.
Directors & Officers liability
Material from seed/Series A onwards. Once external investors are on the cap table, D&O becomes a board-level conversation, and investors increasingly require it as a condition of the term sheet. It covers personal liability of directors and officers for wrongful acts in the management of the company: investor disputes, allegations of misleading statements, employment-related claims against directors personally, regulatory investigation costs. We typically place £1m–£2m at Seed, £2m–£5m at Series A and beyond. Some carriers write D&O alongside the tech PI/Cyber programme, which streamlines procurement.
Employment Practices Liability
Often included in D&O at smaller limits, split out as a standalone past about thirty heads. Covers Tribunal defence and settlement for discrimination, harassment, unfair dismissal, whistleblowing. Once a tech business scales past the founder-plus-friends phase, EPLI becomes very real — the highest-frequency claim line we see at this size is constructive dismissal and discrimination matters, often involving senior engineers or product leaders.
Intellectual Property infringement
Trademark and copyright defence is widely available; most integrated tech policies include it within the aggregate. Patent defence is much harder — most carriers exclude it above modest sub-limits, and standalone IP policies are expensive and selectively underwritten. Where IP risk really matters: open-source licence compliance (the GPL/AGPL/MIT/Apache 2.0 distinction, whether your engineers have audited the dependency tree); trademark on product names (we have seen claims where a SaaS launched under a name registered by a US competitor); and patent risk in fintech, blockchain and certain ML applications, where US patent trolls remain a real threat.
Public Liability, Employers' Liability and the Office package
EL is compulsory by statute for any business with employees, £5m minimum (£10m standard market). PL matters whenever a client visits your premises or you visit theirs — for MSPs and IT consultants doing on-site work, this is constant. Standard limit £2m, with £5m or £10m increasingly demanded by enterprise procurement. We bundle EL and PL into an Office Combined wording alongside material damage on fit-out, contents and IT equipment, and business interruption — see Office insurance for the building-and-contents side.
Contractor and IR35 considerations
For consultancies that engage contractors or freelancers, the EL position needs care. We confirm whether contractors are within the EL definition and cross-check the contract chain. HMRC reclassification of contractors as deemed employees has tax consequences that are not insurable, but the employment-status risk has knock-on effects on EL, EPLI exposure, and professional liability where a reclassified contractor's work is later challenged.
Standalone commercial cyber
For clients whose primary risk is cyber rather than professional services delivery — pure SaaS without significant consulting tail, businesses where the integrated PI/Cyber product is not the right vehicle — standalone cyber from a specialist market may be the better placement. See Commercial cyber insurance.
Sector-specific risks we see most
Ransomware and the post-2022 market
The cyber market hardened brutally in 2021–2022 as ransomware loss ratios broke. Underwriters added controls-based underwriting: no MFA on remote access, no quote. No EDR, no decent terms. No immutable backups, no decent terms. Through 2023–2025 the market has stabilised — capacity has returned, new entrants (Coalition, At-Bay, Resilience) have built real UK books, premium pressure has eased — but controls expectations remain. Ransomware sub-limits are tighter than pre-2021, frequently inner-limited at 25 to 50 per cent of the aggregate. If MFA is not enforced everywhere, if EDR is not deployed, if backups can be reached and deleted by an attacker with domain admin, the quote will reflect that, or there will not be a quote at all.
Supply chain and dependent system failure
SolarWinds, Log4j, MOVEit, Snowflake — every couple of years a single vulnerability or third-party compromise ripples through thousands of dependent businesses. Carriers have responded by tightening supply chain wording and narrowing dependent system failure triggers. A SaaS that relies on a single cloud provider needs the cover to actually pay when that provider has an outage, and the trigger language varies considerably.
AI, LLMs and product liability
The fastest-evolving risk on the proposal form. If your product embeds an LLM, underwriters are asking pointed questions. Who is liable when the model hallucinates a financial figure that the customer relies on and loses money? What is the data flow into and out of the third-party LLM provider, and what is your contractual position back to your customers? A typical claim we anticipate: a fintech SaaS embeds an LLM to summarise financial statements; the model misreads a number; the customer trades on it; the loss is six figures; the customer claims under your contractual indemnity. The PI/Tech E&O wording needs to contemplate AI output, and the AI exclusion language creeping into some carriers' wordings needs to be negotiated.
Open-source licence compliance and funds transfer fraud
Engineering teams pull in GPL-licensed libraries without realising what reciprocal-licence obligations attach. Typical scenario: a Series B SaaS gets a letter from a copyright enforcement body alleging GPL violation, demanding source code release or settlement. IP cover within the integrated tech policy can respond, but defence costs are real and refactor remediation is not insurable. Funds transfer fraud claims are frequent — supplier mailbox compromised, invoice arrives with altered bank details, finance pays it, money gone within hours. The Crime sub-limit is often the most undervalued part of a tech business's cover.
US revenue, M&A and key person
Once a UK tech business has meaningful US revenue, the risk profile changes materially. US litigation is faster, more aggressive and more expensive; class actions over data breaches are real exposures. Some carriers will not cover US-domiciled risk at all without a US-paper solution. For businesses in an active M&A process, Warranty & Indemnity insurance is a specialist placement. Key-person cover for technical founders is sometimes requested by investors as a condition of funding.
Bristol & South West considerations
Bristol is, by most measures, the strongest tech cluster in the UK outside London. Silicon Gorge — the corridor through Bristol, Bath, Swindon and into the Thames Valley — has been called out by every Tech Nation report for a decade. The University of Bristol generates a steady flow of spinouts, particularly in robotics (Bristol Robotics Lab) and quantum. The Engine Shed at Temple Meads has incubated a generation of Bristol startups, SETsquared is consistently ranked among the world's leading university business incubators, and Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus is bringing further density. The Old Market and Stokes Croft startup scene gives the city its distinctive scaleup feel — informal, design-led, often founded by people who could have moved to London and chose not to.
The clusters we place cover for:
- Bristol fintech — payments, crypto-adjacent firms, regulated wealth-tech and embedded finance, with FCA-regulated wrap considerations
- Bristol healthtech — clinical software, NHS supply chain, MedTech around the University Hospitals; clinical decision support and DTAC considerations
- Bristol robotics, autonomy and AI — University spinouts and deep-tech firms where product liability intersects with Tech E&O
- Bath software houses — Future plc's media-tech ecosystem and the B2B SaaS cluster in the city
- Cheltenham cyber cluster — the GCHQ orbit, the NCSC's Cheltenham presence, CyNam, Cyber Runway, Cyber Central. We place cover for pen-testers, MSSPs and cyber consultancies. The professional risk here is unusual — they advise others on cyber risk, which raises the standard of care their own underwriters expect
- Cardiff and Newport — Tramshed Tech, the Cardiff software cluster, the devolved public-sector supply chain; semiconductor and IoT firms tied to the Newport silicon legacy
- Swindon — the industrial-tech orbit of the former Honda site, automotive software, IoT firms serving manufacturing
Physical risk varies by location. Avonmouth, Portishead and parts of Cardiff Bay sit on the Severn flood plain — material damage and business interruption rating reflect this. For most modern tech businesses with cloud-first architecture and rented office space, the flood question is small; for those with significant on-premises kit, it is real.
How to get it right at renewal
We start sixty to ninety days before renewal for tech clients. The cover is complex enough, and the underwriting questions deep enough, that anything shorter rushes the work and produces worse terms.
The presentation matters more here than in almost any other commercial line. Underwriters want to see:
- Turnover, ARR or recurring revenue, headcount, geographic revenue split, regulated-industry revenue share
- The technology stack at a sensible level of detail — cloud providers, primary frameworks, data residency
- Security controls — MFA scope and enforcement, EDR product and coverage, backup architecture (immutability, frequency, test restore cadence), patching policy, vulnerability scanning and pen-testing cadence, SOC 2 or ISO 27001 status
- AI/ML usage — whether you build, embed, sell or train models; data flows to and from third-party LLM providers; how output is presented to end users
- Customer contract posture — typical liability cap, indemnity scope, whether you accept uncapped liability for any tranche of risk, US contract share
- Claims and incidents history — full disclosure of any prior incident (even one that did not result in a claim) is essential. Non-disclosure at renewal is the fastest way to void cover when you need it
- D&O and EPLI: cap table, board composition, employment law posture, any pending matters
A good submission gets a meaningfully better quote than a thin one. We build the submission with you, draft the technical sections, and coordinate pen-test or SOC 2 reports to share under NDA where helpful. We test the market deliberately, not by spraying across twenty carriers — most tech risks have a natural home with two to four carriers based on size and sector. Multi-quote helps for risks that are hard to place or where capacity is needed in layers (£10m+ programmes often need primary plus excess); it hurts for clean smaller risks where underwriters notice mass-blasted submissions and price accordingly. Renewal day itself is rarely the moment we settle terms — we are usually weeks ahead, with bound or near-bound terms, by the time the existing policy expires.
How Apex helps
We are an independent commercial broker based in Bristol, regulated by the FCA under FRN 724952. Broad market panel access for tech risks — Beazley, CFC, Coalition, Hiscox Tech, Tokio Marine HCC, Travelers Tech, AIG, Markel Tech and the wider Lloyd's tech market. We are currently ranked first in Bristol for Professional Indemnity insurance, and tech PI/Cyber is the largest single area of our commercial book.
What we actually do: we read the cover. We translate your business into the underwriter's language. We negotiate the wording, not just the price. We coordinate breach response panel selection. When a claim happens we advocate for you. We sit in Bristol but place cover across the fifty-mile South West catchment — Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Swindon and beyond. If you would like to talk about cover, a renewal, or a specific claim or incident, speak to us.
FAQs
Do I legally need IT or tech insurance in the UK?
Employers' Liability is compulsory by statute if you have employees. Other covers — PI, Cyber, Tech E&O, D&O — are not legally compulsory but are routinely required by enterprise customer contracts and by investors. In practice, any tech business above sole-trader scale carries the integrated PI/Cyber/Tech E&O product.
How much does IT and tech firm insurance cost in the UK?
It varies widely with turnover, headcount, US revenue share, regulated-industry exposure, AI/ML risk profile and security controls. A small consultancy might pay a few thousand pounds annually for integrated PI/Cyber; a Series B SaaS with £5m cover, US revenue and an enterprise customer base can pay tens of thousands or more. We size cover and premium to the risk, not the other way round.
What is the difference between PI and Cyber and Tech E&O?
PI covers professional negligence in services delivered. Tech E&O covers errors in technology products and services specifically — defective code, missed milestones, system failures. Cyber covers first-party loss from a cyber event (ransomware, restoration, business interruption) and third-party liability for data breaches and privacy claims. Modern integrated policies bundle all three under one limit.
Will my Cyber policy pay a ransomware ransom?
Sometimes, where the payment is lawful (no sanctioned counterparty), where the carrier's panel has approved the decision and where the wording permits it. Sub-limits and controls scrutiny apply.
Do I need D&O insurance as a founder?
If you have external investors, D&O is almost always required by the term sheet or expected by the board. Pre-investment it is optional; after a priced round it becomes important quickly.
How does the cyber market look in 2026?
Capacity has returned and premium pressure has eased compared with the 2021–2022 hardening, but controls-based underwriting remains the norm. Ransomware sub-limits are tighter than pre-2021, and supply chain wording has tightened post-MOVEit and post-Snowflake.
Will my insurance cover my AI features?
It depends on the wording. Standard integrated tech policies have historically covered AI-driven output by default, but some carriers are now adding AI-specific exclusions or sub-limits. We read the wording carefully.
What happens if a US customer sues us?
US litigation drives premium and tightens cover. Some carriers will not write US-facing risk without a US-paper solution. We size cover deliberately where revenue is material.
Can I add my IT contractors to a single policy?
Generally yes, but the EL and PI position for contractor engagements needs care, particularly around IR35 reclassification risk.
How long does a quote take?
For a clean, well-presented risk in the standard tech band, terms can be back in a week. For complex or larger risks — Series B and above, US revenue, AI heavy — we typically work over four to eight weeks.
Do you place cover for tech firms outside Bristol?
Yes. We are Bristol-based but place cover across the South West catchment and, for tech clients, across the UK. The tech market is concentrated enough that geography matters less than fit.
What do I need to disclose at renewal?
Everything material, including any prior incident or near-miss even if it did not result in a claim, any change to security controls, any new product or AI feature, and any change to US revenue share. Non-disclosure is the fastest route to a voided policy when you need it.
Other sectors we cover
- Office insurance — the building, contents, EL and PL side of the cover stack for any tech business with a physical office
- Marketing, PR and creative agencies insurance — for tech-adjacent agencies and creative-led businesses with a hybrid PI/Cyber risk profile
- Commercial cyber insurance — standalone cyber cover where the integrated tech product is not the right vehicle
Coverage area
Apex is based in Bristol and places commercial cover for tech firms across the South West and beyond. From our work with founders and finance leads in Bristol, Bath, the Cheltenham cyber cluster, Cardiff, Newport and Swindon, we cover the South West tech ecosystem in depth. For the full pillar on commercial cover across the region, see Commercial insurance Bristol and South West.
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