FCA authorised · FRN 7249520117 325 0027Quote & buy →
Before anyone debates price, establish what is actually being sold. Take the renewal schedule and last year’s and compare them line by line: sums insured and limits, excesses on each section, endorsements added or reworded, conditions and warranties, and anything that has quietly disappeared. Renewals sometimes hold the premium down by trimming cover; others raise the premium and trim cover. Until you have compared documents, you do not know which conversation you are in. Our renewal checklist has the full list of what to look at.
Whoever arranged the policy — broker or insurer direct — should be able to explain the increase in plain terms: is it your claims record, a change in your declared figures, a re-rating of your activities, or a movement across the insurer’s whole book? These have very different implications, which we unpack on why has my business insurance gone up? A vague “the market’s gone up” is not an answer; it’s a brush-off. Put the question in writing if you need to.
Premiums are calculated on what you declared: turnover, wage roll, sums insured, vehicle schedules, business description. If those figures are stale, you may be paying for a business you no longer are — overdeclared turnover and wage roll cost real money every year. Underdeclaring is worse in the other direction: it saves premium now and surfaces at claim time, when underinsurance can reduce what the policy pays. Renewals are the natural moment to true everything up, honestly, in both directions.
Re-marketing is not feeding your details into a comparison engine. A broker builds a submission — corrected figures, claims record with context, what changed after any loss, the real mix of what you do — and puts it in front of a chosen spread of insurers, including markets that don’t sell direct or online. Then the quotes are compared like for like: limits, excesses and endorsements, not just totals.
Two to four weeks before renewal is the comfortable window: enough time for underwriters to ask questions and for you to weigh the answers without a deadline at your back. Closer than that, be straight about the date — the exercise compresses, but for many risks it remains worth running right up to the final days. What it never justifies is the alternative in step 5.
Letting cover expire to pressure an insurer, or “going bare” for a few weeks while you decide, is the one genuinely destructive move. Any uninsured day is a day a fire, an injury or a claim is entirely yours. A lapse also follows you: proposal forms ask about gaps in cover, and a gap makes every future insurer more cautious.
For claims-made classes — professional indemnity, directors’ & officers’, cyber — a lapse is worse still: the policy that pays is the one in force when the claim is made, so letting PI lapse strips protection from every year of past work at once. If it’s your PI renewal that has exploded, that situation has its own page: PI premium doubled at renewal.
Sometimes the exercise comes back and the answer is: the price is right. Claims really do cost more to settle; your sums insured really did need to rise; your class really has hardened. When a proper re-marketing confirms the renewal terms, paying them with correct cover is the good outcome — you now know the price is fair, rather than suspecting it isn’t, and you haven’t traded a sound policy for a cheaper one with a larger excess and quieter exclusions. If your trade itself is what the market dislikes, the hard-to-place series shows how those risks get placed.
There is no fixed cut-off. Two to four weeks before renewal gives a broker time to present the risk properly and gives underwriters time to consider it; with days to go, options narrow but rarely to zero, particularly for straightforward risks. If you are very late, say so up front — a broker can tell you quickly whether anything useful can be done, and holding cover in place while the exercise runs is always the priority.
Mid-term moves are possible but usually inefficient: you may face cancellation terms on the old policy, and insurers generally prefer to quote at renewal when a full year’s risk is on offer. Unless something is badly wrong with the current cover, the stronger play is normally to use the time before renewal to prepare a proper re-marketing exercise.
Getting the market tested does no harm — but several brokers approaching the same insurers separately for the same risk does. Underwriters see duplicate submissions, and a risk that looks shopped-to-everyone gets less attention, not more. One broker coordinating a deliberate approach to a chosen spread of markets gets better answers than a free-for-all.
The current schedule and policy wording, last year’s equivalent if you have it, your claims experience, up-to-date turnover and wage-roll figures, and an honest note of what has changed in the business — activities, premises, vehicles, subcontracting, new contracts. The quality of that pack largely determines the quality of the quotes.
When the drivers are real and market-wide — claims inflation, index-linked sums insured, a hardening class — and a genuine re-marketing exercise comes back confirming the price. At that point the increase is the cost of being properly covered, and paying it beats swapping to a cheaper policy with a bigger excess and quieter exclusions. A decent broker will tell you when that is the honest answer.
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This page is general information, not advice on a specific policy.
