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 for the Clifton accountancy partner with twelve fee earners and a Friday-evening laptop theft on his loss runs; for the IFA principal off Queen Square with £180m AUM and a contents schedule that hasn't been re-rated since 2019; for the four-partner Bath solicitors' firm whose PI renewal is November and whose office package is March; for the Bristol architecture practice paying separately for PI, office, cyber and crime, and suspecting none of those policies talk to each other. The PI sits where it should, with a specialist PI underwriter. The office package that wraps around it almost always sits with the wrong broker, on the wrong wording, with the wrong limits.
A typical loss isn't dramatic. It's an escape of water on the floor above on a Sunday in February. It's a stolen Mac and three monitors after a rear-window entry over a bank holiday. It's a ransomware encryption that locks the case management system from Friday afternoon to Tuesday. It's HMRC opening an aspect enquiry and £14,000 of defence fees following. None of these are PI losses. All sit on the office and ancillary covers, and all are routinely under-bought.
We already place PI for accountancy, IFA, solicitor, architecture, engineering, surveying, patent and consultancy practices across Bristol and the South West, and currently rank first in Bristol for PI. This hub is the natural office companion: the package that sits alongside the PI and gets handled by the same broker.
What professional services office insurance is
"Professional services office insurance" is what the UK market calls the commercial combined package for a white-collar practice. It's distinct from the standalone office product sold to small businesses on a Hiscox 606 or Aviva Fast Trade basis, and distinct from Professional Indemnity. The package usually combines Material Damage, Business Interruption, Public and Products Liability, Employers' Liability, Money, Goods in Transit, Personal Accident and Legal Expenses on a single schedule. Cyber and Crime sit on separate specialist policies; we keep them on the same renewal cycle wherever underwriting timing allows.
The line between an off-the-shelf SME office policy and a properly brokered professional services package sits where any of the following becomes true: turnover above £1m to £1.5m, fee earner headcount above ten, IT spend above £75,000, premises occupied as the firm's principal place of business, client money held in any meaningful way, or a regulator that takes a view on how the firm manages information (FCA, SRA, ICAEW, ICO). At that point the inner limits on the SME product bite: laptops away from the premises capped at £2,500 each, money on premises overnight capped at £2,500, no Additional Increased Cost of Working, no meaningful tax investigation cover, no separate Crime section, and a token Cyber sublimit.
A broker matters here for three reasons. Market access: the wordings that fit a professional services firm sit on Aviva Fast Trade and Plus, Hiscox 606 and Premier, AXA, Allianz, RSA and Zurich, plus specialist MGAs for the harder elements, and most are not available direct. Claims advocacy: when an escape of water takes out the second floor on a Sunday and the firm needs alternative premises by Tuesday, somebody has to make that happen alongside the loss adjuster. Integration with PI: presenting the office, cyber, crime and PI risks with a consistent story, figures and loss runs is materially different from buying four policies from four channels.
The covers you actually need
We organise the conversation around three tiers: covers every professional services firm needs, covers most firms need once they're past sole-practitioner scale, and covers that earn their place for specific practice types.
Must-have covers
Material Damage and contents
Buildings if the firm owns the freehold, otherwise tenants' improvements (partitions, kitchens, server rooms, AV systems, carpets and lighting the lease makes the firm responsible for reinstating). Contents on a new-for-old basis covering furniture, IT hardware, AV, art, library and physical records.
The number that gets quoted is almost always wrong. For a 15-fee-earner Bristol practice, we typically rebuild a contents schedule to £180,000 to £350,000 once we count three monitors per desk, partner MacBooks, the Zoom Rooms kit, standing desks and AV. Contents valued on what the firm bought five years ago, rather than current replacement cost, is the single biggest under-insurance risk in this sector.
Portable equipment cover should run on an "anywhere in the UK and EU" basis with per-item limits at least equal to a fully-specced MacBook Pro; theft cover should not require forcible and violent entry where the firm uses a managed reception or shared lobby; flood cover should be confirmed in writing on any flagged postcode.
Business Interruption
The BI calculation is not about rebuild time, it's about how long it takes to get fee earners productive again. Maximum indemnity period should run 18 to 24 months. Twelve months catches firms out where an escape of water means six months out of the building, a fit-out for replacement premises, then a phased return.
The line that matters more than gross profit is Additional Increased Cost of Working (AICW). Standard ICW caps reimbursement at the saving in gross profit; AICW pays the cost of keeping the practice running above that — serviced office space, IT reprovisioning, document recovery, contractor cover. We push for AICW limits of £100,000 to £500,000 depending on practice size, on a separate basis from the gross profit sum insured.
Public Liability
£2m as a minimum, £5m where client visits are routine (most accountancy and legal firms), £10m where the firm runs events or training. The standard claim is a slip-and-trip in reception or a contractor injured during an out-of-hours fit-out. Under-buying the limit is a false economy.
Employers' Liability
£10m, statutory minimum. Watch for contractor and volunteer definitions where the firm uses paralegals, trainees, or fee-share consultants who aren't on payroll.
Should-have covers
Cyber
For most firms in this sector, Cyber is now more important than the underlying office package. The data the firm holds — client tax affairs, will files, conveyancing files, financial planning factfinds, AUM data, M&A documents — is the asset. The threat is ransomware, business email compromise, and inadvertent breach.
We place Cyber on standalone wordings rather than as a package extension. The covers that matter: first-party data restoration; cyber business interruption (separate from the office BI); ransomware response; incident response with a forensic IT partner, PR consultancy and a breach lawyer on retainer; ICO investigation defence costs; third-party liability for affected data subjects; and social engineering extensions where the package Crime policy won't reach.
Indicative limits: £250,000 for a sole-practitioner consultancy, £500,000 to £1m for a small partnership, £2m to £5m for a firm with material client money exposure or large AUM. The bolted-on £25,000 sublimit on an SME office package is a token, not a cover.
Crime / Employee dishonesty
Particularly load-bearing for accountants, IFAs, payroll bureaux and any firm handling client money. SRA Minimum Terms PI extends some cover to solicitors for dishonesty of partners and employees, but it's there to protect clients, not the firm, and doesn't cover vendor fraud, payroll diversion or social engineering against the firm's own accounts.
Indicative limits: £100,000 for small consultancies, £250,000 to £1m for accountancy and IFA practices, higher where significant client money is held. Underwriters ask about segregation of duties, dual authorisation on payment runs, supplier onboarding controls, and the policy for verifying changes to client bank details.
Legal Expenses
The most cost-effective add-on for a professional services firm, and the one most often left off:
- Tax investigation cover — pays for accountants' fees defending HMRC enquiries (aspect, full, IR35, VAT, employer compliance). A full enquiry routinely runs £8,000 to £25,000 in fees. We extend it to cover the partners' personal returns as standard.
- Employment tribunal defence — average defended claim runs £15,000 to £30,000 in fees.
- Contract dispute — recovery of unpaid fees, defence of scope disputes.
- Property and lease dispute — landlord/tenant, dilapidations, service charge.
- Statutory licence appeals — relevant for FCA-authorised firms.
Indicative limit: £100,000 per claim. Most insurers include a 24/7 legal helpline that partners use more than they expect.
Money and Personal Accident
Cash levels are usually small, but in-transit cover matters and overnight safe limits need to be set realistically rather than at the default £2,500. Personal Accident: a modest weekly benefit policy for partners, paying out on injury or temporary incapacity. Cheap, useful where one partner's absence materially reduces capacity.
Nice-to-have / situational covers
Key Person life and critical illness — for sole practitioners and two-partner practices, loss of the principal is loss of the firm. Pays a lump sum on death or diagnosis, giving the surviving partner runway to wind down or sell the book.
Directors' & Officers' liability — where the practice is incorporated as an LLP or limited company. Covers partners and directors personally for management decisions. Increasingly relevant where external investors are involved.
Goods in transit — where the firm regularly moves physical files, deeds or originals. Low premium, easily overlooked.
Sector-specific risks we see most
Friday-evening laptop theft
The most common physical loss in this sector. Office cleared by 5.30, entry via a rear yard or rooftop between Friday evening and Monday morning, laptops and monitors taken. Single losses of £18,000 to £40,000 on small practices; one large Bristol firm lost 22 laptops in a long weekend. Half the schedules we audit cap per-item payments at £2,000 against a £3,200 replacement cost.
Escape of water
The biggest single cause of office property loss in the UK and the leading driver of BI claims in this sector. A failed flexi-hose under a third-floor kitchenette runs for 72 hours over a bank holiday. Second-floor offices, server room and library are unusable for eight to fourteen weeks. Claims of £140,000 to £400,000, dominated by alternative premises, IT reprovisioning and AICW. Standard wordings exclude gradual seepage and require unattended-premises shut-offs over Christmas; we check those clauses on every placement.
Ransomware and business email compromise
A two-partner consultancy. The practice manager receives a payment instruction by email, apparently from a known supplier, with new bank details. £42,000 paid out. The supplier never sees it. Email had been compromised three weeks earlier and the offender timed the spoof to a genuine invoice. Package Crime policies exclude voluntary parting with funds; this needs a Cyber social engineering extension, properly sub-limited. The £25,000 Cyber extension on a typical office policy doesn't reach.
ICO investigation following a breach
A small Cardiff IFA practice. An adviser's laptop is stolen from a client visit. Disk is encrypted, but the firm still has to notify the ICO within 72 hours under UK GDPR Article 33. The notification triggers an investigation, six weeks of responding to information notices, and a £19,000 legal bill before any fine question is reached. ICO defence cost is a specific Cyber sub-line and should be confirmed in writing with a separate limit and a named breach response panel.
Professional contents under-insurance
The firm's contents schedule was rebased in 2019. Five years of capex since — new MacBooks, an AV refit, two Zoom Rooms, post-Covid furniture replacement, server room kit — was never added. Sum insured £180,000; actual replacement cost £315,000. An £80,000 partial loss is paid pro-rata at 57%, paying £45,600. Average clauses catch out this sector more than any other. We rebuild contents schedules at every renewal.
Client money custody failures
FCA CASS rules for IFAs and SRA Accounts Rules for solicitors impose specific duties on client money custody. Where those fail, the regulatory response includes investigation, reporting and potential restitution. PI responds to third-party loss; the office package generally won't pick up the regulatory cost. We place specific regulatory defence extensions where permissions warrant it.
Bristol & South West considerations
The professional services cluster across the Bristol travel-to-work area is unusually dense. Temple Quay and Glass Wharf hold the larger accountancy and legal practices and the regional offices of national IFAs. The Engine Shed, Spike Island and Wapping Wharf belt house consultancies and architecture practices grown out of the Bristol creative and engineering economy. College Green and Queen Square remain traditional solicitor and barrister territory, with a long tail of small partnerships in Georgian conversions where the contents schedule is dominated by fit-out and library.
Bath is a distinct sub-market: Queen Square, Royal Crescent and the Pulteney Bridge professional offices hold a high proportion of legal and architecture practices serving private clients. Premises are often listed or in conservation areas, which complicates reinstatement — like-for-like restoration of lath-and-plaster ceilings, conservation-approved sash windows and surveyor input all push the maximum indemnity period beyond 12 months.
Cheltenham is the South West's financial services cluster, with Royal & Sun Alliance and Eagle Star heritage seeding a generation of independent advisers, wealth managers and consultancies around Endeavour House and the Promenade. The GCHQ supply chain has driven a separate cluster of cyber and security consultancies needing a heavily-uplifted Cyber response alongside the office package.
Cardiff (Capital Tower, Central Square) holds the Welsh consultancy and legal economy, much of it adjacent to the devolved government and public sector. Newport's smaller financial services cluster mirrors this. Swindon (Symmetry Park, Windmill Hill) holds back-office and consultancy operations grown from the rail and financial heritage; Yeovil holds a concentration of engineering consultancies serving the Westland aerospace and defence supply chain, where the office package sits alongside a heavily-rated PI policy.
The Severn flood plain matters for premises in Avonmouth, Portishead, parts of Bridgwater and lower-lying Cardiff Bay sites. Flood is excluded as standard on most office wordings at those postcodes and has to be confirmed in writing with the placing slip. We confirm rather than assume.
How to get it right at renewal
Start 60 to 90 days out. Early September for a November renewal, early January for a March renewal. Underwriters in this sector see the bulk of submissions in the final fortnight; a firm presented properly in week one gets a better read than the same firm presented in week eight.
What underwriters want to see:
- Loss runs over five years, with a narrative on open reserves that are likely to close lower.
- Current schedule of fee earners, role mix and turnover by service line.
- Photos of the premises — exterior, reception, server room, alarm box, fire panel.
- Lease repairing covenants — these set the tenants' improvements sum insured.
- Alarm grading — Grade 2 monitored, Grade 3 dual-path with police response, Red Care or IP signalling. Theft sub-limits are warranted on alarm grade.
- Contents schedule rebuilt to current replacement cost. The highest-impact piece of pre-renewal work.
- Cyber maturity evidence — immutable off-site backups, MFA on email and admin accounts, EDR deployment, written incident response plan, Cyber Essentials Plus or ISO 27001 where held.
- Compliance evidence — FCA permissions, SRA practising certificates, ICAEW or ACCA certificates, ARB registration.
We sequence the renewal: brief 12 weeks out, submission ready 10 weeks out, primary market response by 6 weeks, terms refined by 4 weeks, schedules signed and certificates issued by 1 week. Where the PI sits with us, the two renewals align where possible and the same loss runs serve both submissions.
A multi-quote approach is useful for the office package up to a point. Beyond that point it hardens the market — underwriters who see the same risk three times in a fortnight assume it's being shopped. We approach the right two or three markets and use leverage where there's a credible alternative, not as a default tactic.
How Apex helps
Apex Insurance Brokers is an independent Bristol-headquartered commercial broker, FCA FRN 724952, currently ranked first in Bristol for Professional Indemnity. We place office, cyber, crime, legal expenses and key-person cover for the same accountancy, IFA, solicitor, architecture, engineering and consultancy practices we already look after for PI, and for plenty we don't.
Our approach: broad market panel access across Aviva, Hiscox, AXA, Allianz, RSA, Zurich and the specialist MGAs; claims advocacy from FNOL through to settlement; renewal preparation 60 to 90 days out with a written brief, contents rebuild and risk narrative; integration with the PI conversation where we hold both.
We sit in Bristol but place risks across the 50-mile catchment — Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Swindon, Yeovil, Taunton, Wells, Stroud and the wider South West. To review your office package, your PI, or both, speak to us.
FAQs
Do I legally need professional services office insurance?
Employers' Liability is the only statutory element where the firm employs anyone other than its own directors. Public Liability, Material Damage and Business Interruption are usually required by your lease and by your regulator's expectations of business continuity, even though they aren't legally compulsory.
How much does professional services office insurance cost in the UK?
For a 10-fee-earner Bristol practice, the office package (Material Damage, BI, PL, EL, Money, Legal Expenses) usually sits from £1,800 to £4,500 a year. Cyber adds £900 to £3,500; Crime adds £400 to £1,200. Numbers vary with turnover, contents value and claims history; we quote against the actual risk.
Is this the same as Professional Indemnity?
No. PI covers liability for professional advice. The office package covers your firm's own property, business interruption, liability for non-advice incidents, and ancillary exposures (cyber, crime, legal expenses). Almost every professional services firm needs both.
Can I put PI and the office package on the same policy?
Generally not. PI is placed with specialist PI underwriters (RPC, Travelers, Liberty, Allianz on PI, specialist MGAs); the office package goes to commercial markets. We align renewal dates and run them through the same broker, which gives most of the benefit without forcing both onto a wording that fits neither.
What does "Additional Increased Cost of Working" actually pay for?
Costs you incur to keep the practice running after a property loss, over and above the saving in gross profit. Serviced office space, replacement IT, document recovery, contractor cover — anything that lets fee earners keep billing while the main premises is unusable.
Do I need separate Cyber if I already have a Cyber extension on my office policy?
Almost always yes. The bolted-on extension typically caps at £25,000 to £100,000 with narrow definitions and no real incident response panel. A standalone wording gives you a forensic IT partner, breach lawyer, PR support, ICO defence and a meaningful first-party limit.
My SRA Minimum Terms PI already includes Crime cover. Do I still need a Crime policy?
Yes. The SRA dishonesty extension protects clients, not the firm. A separate Crime policy responds to vendor fraud, social engineering against your own accounts, and employee theft of office property — none of which the SRA extension reaches.
How does hybrid working affect the cover?
It widens the portable equipment exposure and reduces premises theft risk. We adjust portable equipment limits to match the laptop count and confirm home-based working cover in writing.
Do you place office cover outside Bristol?
Yes. Across Bath, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Swindon, Yeovil, Taunton, Wells, Stroud and the wider South West and South Wales from our Bristol base.
How long does a quote take?
For a straightforward practice, indicative terms within five working days. A full specialist-market presentation with bespoke wordings runs to two to three weeks. We work backwards from the renewal date.
Can I move my renewal to align with my PI?
Yes. Renewal moves are sequenced so the firm doesn't lose cover or double-pay premium.
What happens if my office is unusable after a flood or fire?
BI pays for lost gross profit; AICW pays for alternative working arrangements. We engage the loss adjuster within 24 hours, source temporary premises through the firm's network or the insurer's panel, and run IT reprovisioning in parallel. Aim: partners back on client calls within 72 hours.
Other sectors we cover
- Office insurance — the general office package for non-regulated businesses without a PI overlay.
- IT services & tech firms insurance — for software houses, MSPs and SaaS businesses where cyber and tech PI dominate.
- Marketing, PR & creative agencies insurance — agencies whose risk profile sits closer to media liability and IP.
The underlying PI pillars this office hub sits alongside: Solicitors PI, Architects PI, and the full PI sectors index.
Coverage area
This hub serves accountancy, IFA, solicitor, architecture, engineering, surveying and consultancy practices across the commercial insurance Bristol and South West catchment, centred on Bristol and reaching Bath, Cheltenham, Cardiff, Swindon and Gloucester, with the wider South West and South Wales served from the same Bristol team.
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