Professional Indemnity Insurance for UK Firms with US Clients

Reviewed by Apex Insurance Brokers · Last reviewed 2026-08-10

A UK professional firm can run for years with a clean PI programme, then take on one engagement for a US client — or sign one contract governed by New York law — and find that its next renewal looks nothing like the last. That is not underwriter caprice. North American exposure genuinely changes the shape of the risk, and it changes what the policy needs to do. This page sets out why, what wordings typically do with US exposure, and how a firm with substantial premium spend should prepare before going to market.

Why does a US client change the underwriting of a UK PI risk?

The concern is not the client's nationality; it is the legal environment a dispute would land in. Several features of US civil litigation make claims against professionals more likely to be brought, more expensive to defend and harder to predict than their English equivalents.

Contingency fee arrangements mean a claimant can pursue a professional negligence action with little cost risk of their own, which lowers the threshold for bringing marginal claims. The general US rule that each side bears its own legal costs — in contrast to the English loser-pays principle — removes much of the deterrent against speculative litigation. Civil jury trials introduce a level of unpredictability in quantum that English judges sitting alone rarely produce, and in some states punitive damages are available in circumstances where an English court would award none. Pre-trial discovery is far broader and more expensive than English disclosure, so even a claim that is ultimately defeated can consume a substantial part of a policy limit in defence costs alone. Class and collective actions are more developed, which matters where a firm's work product reaches many end users.

None of this means a US engagement is unwritable. It means underwriters price it differently, ask more questions about it, and are far less willing to leave it silent in the wording.

What do PI policies typically do with North American exposure?

Wordings vary considerably, but most approaches fall into a small number of patterns, and it is worth being precise about the distinctions because they are frequently confused.

A territorial limit restricts where the work can be performed. Many UK wordings are worldwide as to territory — the firm can do the work from anywhere — but that is only half the question. A jurisdiction clause restricts where a claim can be brought and still be covered. It is common to see wordings that are worldwide in territory but exclude claims brought in the courts of the United States or Canada, or claims arising from the enforcement of a US judgment elsewhere. A firm reading only the territorial provision can believe it has cover it does not have: the work is covered, but the claim, brought where the client will actually sue, is not.

Beyond jurisdiction clauses, some wordings carry an outright North American exclusion attaching to any work for US-domiciled clients or US-situated projects. Others will grant the exposure but apply a sub-limit — a lower amount of cover for US-connected claims than the headline limit of indemnity — and it is common for that sub-limit to be written on a costs-inclusive basis, so that defence costs erode it. Given what US defence costs can do to a limit, a costs-inclusive sub-limit is a materially weaker promise than it appears on the schedule. Finally, insurers who are comfortable with the risk will often write the exposure back in by endorsement, usually with specific conditions: disclosed contracts, liability caps, agreed dispute-resolution provisions, sometimes a higher excess for US claims.

The practical point for a buyer: do not infer your US position from the quote summary. It lives in the interaction between the territorial clause, the jurisdiction clause, the exclusions and any endorsements — and those need reading together, ideally by someone who has seen how they respond at claim time.

Does the governing law of the contract matter as much as where the client is?

Often more. A firm can act for a US client under an English-law engagement letter with exclusive English jurisdiction and present a very different risk from a firm that has signed the client's own paper governed by the law of Delaware or New York with disputes to be heard in US courts. In the first case, a dispute is likely to be fought on familiar ground; in the second, the firm has contracted its way into precisely the litigation environment described above, whatever its own domicile.

Underwriters read engagement terms with this in mind. Governing law and forum-selection clauses, the presence or absence of a liability cap, indemnity language drafted to US conventions, and waivers of consequential loss all feed the assessment. Arbitration clauses with a London or other neutral seat can materially improve how the risk is received, though they are not a cure-all — enforcement and third-party claims can still reach US courts. Where a client's standard terms also demand a higher limit of indemnity than the firm carries, the two issues compound each other; we cover that scenario separately in what to do when a contract requires a higher PI limit.

What about work touching US-listed groups?

A distinct category of exposure arises where a firm's work feeds — even indirectly — into the reporting or transactions of a US-listed group: accountancy and audit-adjacent work, valuations relied on in filings, legal opinions supporting a listing or capital raise, due diligence on a US acquisition. The US securities litigation environment is active, and claims can arrive from parties the firm never contracted with. Underwriters typically ask about this exposure specifically, and a firm that cannot articulate where its work product ends up will find the questioning uncomfortable. It is far better to map that exposure yourself, in advance, than to have it surfaced by an underwriter's follow-up questions mid-placement.

For solicitors there is a structural wrinkle worth understanding. The SRA Minimum Terms and Conditions govern the compulsory primary layer — a minimum of £2m any one claim, or £3m for recognised and licensed bodies — and that layer is deliberately broad. Excess layers sit outside the MTC regime, and it is common for excess wordings to be narrower than the primary, including on North American exposure. A firm with US work and a tower of cover should check each layer's US position independently rather than assuming the primary's breadth flows upward; see our page on excess layer PI insurance for how these layers are built and where they diverge.

What will underwriters want to see before quoting?

US exposure moves a submission from form-filling into underwriting proper. The insurers with genuine appetite — and there are fewer of them than for a purely domestic risk — will want to understand the exposure in detail, and the quality of the submission directly affects both terms and price. Expect scrutiny of the proportion of fee income derived from US clients or US-law contracts, and its trajectory; the nature of the work, since advisory work reaching US capital markets reads very differently from, say, English-law advice delivered to a US parent's UK subsidiary; and the firm's contracting discipline — whether engagements go out on the firm's terms, whether liability caps are achieved in practice rather than merely attempted, and who has authority to accept a client's paper.

A firm that arrives with this analysis done presents as a managed risk. A firm that discovers its own US revenue percentage during the meeting presents as an unmanaged one, and is priced accordingly.

How should we prepare before approaching the market?

For a firm with substantial premium and real US exposure, preparation is worth starting well before renewal — several months, where the exposure is new or growing. The core of it:

• Quantify the exposure. Fee income by client domicile and by governing law of contract, for the current and prior two years, with a forward view. Underwriters will ask; have the answer ready and consistent.
• Audit your engagement terms. Identify every live contract under US law or with US jurisdiction, and every engagement lacking a liability cap. Note where dispute-resolution clauses point.
• Map indirect exposure. Work product reaching US filings, US transactions or US end users, even where the contracting client is a UK entity.
• Read your current wording as a whole. Territorial clause, jurisdiction clause, exclusions, endorsements and — if you carry excess layers — each layer separately. Identify the gap between what you carry and what your US book needs.
• Decide what you actually want to buy. Full write-back, a negotiated sub-limit at a sensible level, or a deliberate decision to decline certain US work: each is defensible, but it should be a decision, not a default.

The last point deserves emphasis. Cover for US exposure costs money, and for some firms the right commercial answer is contractual — declining US jurisdiction clauses, insisting on arbitration, capping liability — rather than purely insurance-led. A broker who understands both sides of that trade-off can save a firm from paying for cover it could have engineered out, or from relying on contract terms that will not survive contact with a determined US claimant. Where the exposure is retained, placement strategy matters: which insurers to approach, in what order, and with what narrative, because a submission declined by three markets is harder to place with the fourth.

The firms that handle US exposure well treat it as a standing discipline rather than a renewal-time scramble: contract vetting that keeps US-law paper visible, a wording reviewed against the actual book each year, and a broker relationship senior enough to negotiate endorsement terms rather than simply relay them. If your firm is taking on US clients — or already has, quietly, through one or two engagements nobody flagged — that discipline is worth establishing now.

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This article is general information, not advice on a specific policy.