Restructuring a £25m Property Programme During a Live Claim

The comfortable time to restructure an insurance programme is when nothing is happening. Claims are settled, relationships are calm, and the market can be approached at leisure. Businesses do not get to choose that timing. Renewals arrive on their own schedule, programmes outgrow their structures on their own schedule — and sometimes both happen while a substantial claim is open. We recently placed and restructured a £25m programme for a property management business while supporting the client through a substantial live claim. Those are the facts of that placement. This page is about the general problem: why touching a programme mid-claim is delicate, and what a broker actually has to manage to do it safely.

Why moving cover mid-claim is delicate

Three forces make it so. The first is continuity. Parts of a substantial commercial programme — professional indemnity and similar liability lines — operate on a claims-made basis: the policy that responds is the one in force when the claim is made, not when the work was done. Restructure carelessly across a claims-made line and the transition itself can manufacture a gap — a matter known but not yet formally claimed, falling between the outgoing policy’s notification window and the incoming policy’s exclusion of known circumstances. Whatever else changes in a restructure, the continuity chain across every claims-made line has to remain unbroken, with known matters properly notified to the correct policy before anything moves.

The second is the web of notification duties. An open claim carries live obligations to the incumbent insurer: to keep them informed, to seek consent before incurring costs or making admissions, to cooperate with their handling of the matter. A restructure adds a second set of duties pointing the other way — the duty of fair presentation to every insurer being asked to come onto the programme, which emphatically includes telling them about the live claim. The claim must be disclosed fully to the incoming market at the same time as it is being actively managed with the outgoing insurer. Understating it to incoming insurers poisons the new programme at inception; mishandling obligations to the incumbent jeopardises the very recovery the client is depending on.

The third is relationships. The insurer paying a substantial claim is watching its account being restructured — possibly reduced, possibly ended — while its money is still on the table. Insurers are professional about this; claims are paid because policies require it, not because renewals are pending. But goodwill has real value in a long claim: in reserving posture, in the speed of interim payments, in the benefit of the doubt on grey items. A restructure conducted abrasively spends that goodwill at the moment the client can least afford it.

How a broker manages a placement alongside an open claim

The method is separation with coordination. The claim workstream and the placement workstream are run distinctly — different conversations, often different people — so that claims advocacy is never bargained against renewal terms, and renewal negotiation is never distorted by claim tactics. But they are coordinated at the top, because each constrains the other: the placement timetable must accommodate the claim’s milestones, and every placement document must describe the claim consistently with how it is being presented in the claims process. Inconsistency between the two narratives is the specific error that turns a difficult placement into a coverage dispute.

With the incumbent, the broker’s job is candour and sequence: the insurer hears about the restructure from the broker, framed accurately, before hearing it from the market — and hears just as clearly that the claim will be pursued to conclusion on its merits regardless of where the programme lands. With incoming insurers, the job is confidence-building: a live claim presented early, thoroughly and with a credible account of cause and remediation reads as a managed event; the same claim discovered late in the process, or minimised, reads as a warning about the client and broker both. Underwriters price what they understand and load what they suspect — the presentation of the claim largely decides which of those applies.

The continuity protections that matter in the transition

Certain protections deserve explicit attention whenever a programme moves with matters open. Notification hygiene first: before any outgoing policy lapses, every circumstance that could conceivably become a claim is formally notified to it, preserving the client’s rights under the policy that was on risk when the issue arose. Retroactive continuity on claims-made lines: the incoming policies’ retroactive dates and continuity provisions must preserve cover for past work rather than restarting the clock. Consistency of key definitions and exclusions between outgoing and incoming wordings, so a matter covered under the old programme is not orphaned by drafting differences in the new. And clean allocation across the transition date on occurrence-based property lines, so losses straddling the change have an unambiguous home. None of this is exotic — it is checklist work — but mid-claim, the cost of a missed item stops being theoretical.

What this means for a business facing the same timing

The temptation, with a major claim open, is to freeze: renew everything as expiring and defer structural questions to a calmer year. Sometimes that is right. But a programme that needs restructuring does not stop needing it because a claim arrived — and a live claim is itself evidence about where the structure falls short. The realistic standard is not “never move mid-claim” but “never move mid-claim without the continuity work done in full”. That requires a broker resourced to run advocacy and placement in parallel, and senior enough attention that neither workstream is anyone’s side project. Handled that way, a business can end the process with both a better programme and an intact claim — which is the entire point.

Frequently asked questions

Can an insurer refuse to keep paying a claim if we move our programme elsewhere?

No — the claim is governed by the policy that was on risk when it attached, and the insurer’s obligations under that policy survive non-renewal in full. What can suffer is the discretionary margin around a long claim: responsiveness, interim-payment speed, flexibility on grey areas. That is why the manner of a mid-claim transition — candid, early, professionally handled — matters almost as much as the decision itself.

Do we have to tell prospective new insurers about the live claim?

Yes, unavoidably. The duty of fair presentation under the Insurance Act 2015 squarely covers a substantial open claim, and any attempt to soften it risks the new programme’s validity at exactly the moment it might be needed. The constructive approach is the opposite of concealment: present the claim early and thoroughly, with cause and remediation, so incoming underwriters price an understood event rather than an unquantified fear.

Is it not simpler to wait until the claim settles before restructuring?

Simpler, yes; right, only sometimes. Substantial claims can run for years, and a structure that is failing the business does not pause while they do. The genuine decision factors are whether the continuity protections can be fully executed, whether the claim is stable enough to present accurately to new insurers, and whether the broker can resource both workstreams properly. If those are satisfied, waiting has a cost too — more time on a structure the claim itself may have shown to be wrong.

Details anonymised to protect client confidentiality; outcomes vary with the risk.

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). Every risk is different: nothing on this page is advice on your own programme, and outcomes depend on your firm’s circumstances and the market at the time.