Topic: the state and direction of the UK professional indemnity market. Spokesperson: Matt Bartlett, Director, Apex Insurance Brokers Limited. Use: feature writing, podcast preparation, comment pieces.
This briefing note is the working document Matt uses when a journalist or podcast host approaches Apex on the UK PI market. It sets out the talking points, the sound-bites, the verifiable facts, the lines Apex will and will not take, and a Q&A covering the questions journalists actually ask. The note is designed for journalist use — a feature writer should be able to read it in 15 minutes and have everything needed to write a piece or run an interview.
The note is off-the-record by default. Specific quotes from this note can be attributed to Matt Bartlett under his on-the-record name and title, drawn from the sound-bites section below.
The UK PI market went through a hard cycle from 2021 to 2025 — capacity contracted, rates rose materially, underwriting discipline tightened, and the proposal form became the centrepiece of the underwriter’s read on a risk. Through 2026 the cycle is softening — capacity is returning, rates are stabilising and in places easing, and competition between insurers for clean professional firm business has returned to the market. The discipline of the hard cycle, however, has not left. The proposal-form expectations that hardened between 2022 and 2024 are now baked into how the major UK PI carriers underwrite, and brokers who built proposal-form discipline through the hard market are placing renewals more cleanly than brokers who did not.
That framing — “the cycle has softened, the discipline has stayed” — is the through-line Apex uses on every PI market commentary in 2026.
“The PI cycle has turned, but the proposal-form discipline of 2022-2024 hasn’t. The underwriters who learned to read a clean submission through the hard market are still reading every submission that way.”
“Brokers who built proposal-form discipline through the hard cycle are placing renewals cleanly in 2026. Brokers who didn’t are watching their renewals slip — and they think the market is the problem when it isn’t.”
“Capacity has returned to the SME PI market. Competition has returned. The thing that hasn’t returned is the willingness to underwrite on a thin proposal form.”
“The 2022-2023 hard market changed what a good PI submission looks like. The 2026 softening hasn’t reversed that. It’s the new baseline.”
“The buyer’s job in 2026 is to make sure their broker is treating the proposal form as a working document, not a tick-box. The clients whose brokers do that are getting better terms than the clients whose brokers don’t.”
“There’s no shortcut on a professional indemnity placement. The proposal form is the placement. The market the broker reaches afterwards only matters if the form earns the underwriter’s read.”
“Cyber and PI sit closer together than the standard market wordings let on. Buyers and brokers should be reading both as one risk in 2026, not two.”
“The direct channel cannot do a sub-£10m turnover PI placement properly. The broker model is the model that fits — but the broker model has to be earned, every renewal.”
Apex placed PI through the 2021-2025 hard cycle and through the 2026 softening, across solicitors’ PI, IFAs’ PI, surveyors’ PI, architects’ PI, engineers’ PI, accountants’ PI, IT consultancy PI and designers’ PI.
Apex publishes a quarterly PI Index drawn from its placement data, anonymised and aggregated, available on the firm’s website.
Apex publishes a proposal-form library — question-by-question commentary on the live PI proposal forms — available on the firm’s website.
Apex is FCA-regulated under firm reference number 724952 and is a member of the British Insurance Brokers’ Association.
The firm is a regional broker, headquartered in Bristol, with a client book across the South West and nationally on the PI specialism.
Apex will not give a specific market position number it cannot substantiate — for example “the third largest PI broker in the South West” — without a verifiable definition and citation.
Apex will not quote specific insurer rate changes or specific named insurer behaviour in critical terms without the insurer’s right of reply being arranged.
Apex will not name a specific client or claim under the firm’s broker-client relationship without the client’s written permission.
Apex will not comment in critical terms on a named competing broker. The firm’s positioning is depth-first and the public voice keeps to that.
Apex will not offer regulated investment advice or financial advice to a generic reader. PI commentary is general market commentary, not specific recommendation for a specific buyer.
The market has come through a four-year hard cycle and is now softening. Capacity has returned across most of the SME-facing PI carriers. Rates are stabilising and in cleaner risk sectors (low-claims accountants and IFAs, low-claims smaller surveying practices, lower-risk IT consultancies) are easing back from the 2023-2024 peaks. Where the market remains hard is on the sectors that carried genuine risk-aggregation exposure through the cycle — design professionals with cladding exposure, surveyors with valuation exposure, solicitors with conveyancing or property book exposure. There the rate easing has been slower and the capacity easier to lose if the submission is not clean.
The proposal form. Through 2022 and 2023 the major UK PI insurers materially raised what they expected a proposal form to look like — fuller risk-management narrative, fuller client-mix detail, fuller historic claims disclosure with specific named circumstances, fuller forward-looking projection of fee income. Brokers who built that discipline into their renewal cycle through the hard market are placing 2026 renewals on the basis of that fuller proposal form. The underwriting cadre at the major insurers has not stepped back to the lighter-touch reading they used pre-2021. The clean submission is now the baseline.
Yes. Design professionals — architects, engineers, multi-disciplinary practices — with any cladding-related historic exposure remain harder to place. Surveyors with valuation exposure into the residential mortgage market remain a market-specific risk pool. Solicitors with concentrated conveyancing books or with deceased estate exposure remain harder than the generic small-firm book. There is also a tier of harder-to-place IT consultancy work — particularly where the consultancy carries data-controller responsibility on client systems, where the cyber-PI overlap becomes the binding question.
Running the proposal form as a working document, not a tick-box. That is the single biggest practical shift. The hard market taught brokers that the form is the placement — that the wording of how a firm describes its risk-management practices, its historic notifications, its forward fee mix and its client base determines how the underwriter reads the risk before they look at the rate. A broker who refreshes the form fully at each renewal — and who tests the form’s tone for how an underwriter will read it — gets better terms than a broker who carries forward last year’s form with the numbers updated.
Not really, no — and that is honestly said. The direct channel does not work in commercial PI at SME level. The risks are too varied, the wordings are too divergent, and the underwriter’s read on the form is too important. The buyer who tries to do their own PI placement through a comparison-site channel will either fail to find cover or will end up with cover that does not respond to the risks the firm actually carries. The broker model is the model that fits PI at SME level. The question is which broker, not whether to use one.
It is the single most misunderstood area in 2026 SME insurance. PI policies vary widely on how they treat cyber-related losses. Cyber policies vary widely on how they treat the consultancy or advisory liability that sits behind a cyber event. Buyers — and frankly some brokers — read the two as separate covers, when in practice a 2026 cyber event for a professional firm will engage both wordings and the gaps and overlaps between them determine whether the loss is covered at all. The work for a broker is to read both wordings together at every renewal and to surface the gaps explicitly. Apex’s view is in file 22 of the media kit.
The regional broker is closer to the SME placement reality than the national broker is. The national broker sees the FTSE-listed and PE-backed mid-market book. The regional broker sees the £2m-turnover surveying practice, the £5m-turnover IFA, the £15m-turnover design firm. The proposal-form discipline, the broker-buyer relationship, the wording knowledge — these all matter more at SME level, and they are what a competent regional broker brings. The market needs both. But the policy commentary that emerges from regional brokers tends to be closer to the lived reality of SME clients than the policy commentary from national brokers.
A quarterly PI Index drawn from placement data, anonymised. A proposal-form library with question-by-question commentary on the live forms. A pillar PI section on the website with the full long-form treatment of cover, limits, wordings and aggregation. A sector cluster covering each professional firm sector served. All published, all open-access, all on the website.
Probably, into 2027, on the SME clean-risk end of the book. The harder sectors will lag. The risk is that the softening prompts brokers to ease their proposal-form discipline — to revert to lighter submissions — and that the next downturn finds a market that has not maintained its underwriting discipline through a soft cycle. That is the conversation Apex is having with clients and with insurers in 2026.
The best PI market pieces have a single named cycle and a single named change. “The cycle has turned but the discipline has stayed” is a usable narrative. “The hard market is over” is too one-sided. “The market is back to normal” is wrong and provable wrong.
The best PI market pieces quote specific sectors and specific changes, not generic talk of “the market”. A piece that names the cladding-design exposure, the conveyancing-solicitor book or the IFA fee-mix issue is more useful than a piece that talks about “professional indemnity” without specifics.
The best PI market pieces are honest about what the broker and the underwriter both got wrong through the hard cycle as well as what they got right. A piece that only credits one side of the market is not a usable piece for either.
For media enquiries: Matt Bartlett, Director — matthew.bartlett@apexinsurancebrokers.co.uk — 0117 325 0027. Apex Insurance Brokers Limited, FCA FRN 724952, Companies House 07014570. Trading address: QCS, 53 Queen Charlotte Street, Bristol BS1 4HQ.
Last reviewed: June 2026.
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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