Starting an accountancy practice? The Insurance You Need to Launch (2026)

Reviewed by Apex Insurance Brokers · Last reviewed 2026-08-05

Leaving a firm to hang out your own shingle is one of the more exciting things an accountant can do. It is also a moment where the admin quietly stacks up: a practising certificate, firm registration, money-laundering supervision, a letterhead, a client-money policy… and insurance. The good news is that insurance is one of the more straightforward items on that list, and getting it right early removes a genuine barrier to opening your doors. This guide walks through what you actually need, in roughly the order you will need it.

First things first: registration comes before clients — and shapes your insurance

You cannot really think about insurance in isolation, because your professional body sets the rules. Most accountants in public practice in the UK are regulated by one of the chartered bodies — commonly ICAEW (the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) or ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), though CIMA, ICAS and AAT also have their own frameworks. Before you offer services to the public you will typically need a practising certificate in your own name and, separately, to register the firm itself with your body.

Two things flow from that registration and matter enormously for insurance. First, your body's PII regulations apply to you as a practice. These set out minimum standards for the professional indemnity cover you must hold — including how the limit of indemnity is calculated (often linked to your gross fee income), the maximum acceptable policy excess, and the requirement that cover is placed with an insurer that meets the body's criteria. Second, you must be supervised for anti-money-laundering (AML) purposes. Many accountants are supervised through their professional body; if your body does not supervise your particular firm, HMRC is the default AML supervisor. AML supervision is a legal obligation, not an optional extra, and it is separate from insurance — but underwriters will often ask whether you have it in place.

The practical timeline is this: confirm your practising certificate and firm registration, understand your body's minimum PII terms, arrange AML supervision, and put your PII in place so it is live on the day you start acting for clients. Insurance is not the thing that holds you up — it is usually the quickest of the four to arrange — but it needs to sit inside that sequence rather than being an afterthought.

Professional indemnity: the cornerstone, from day one

Professional indemnity insurance is the policy that responds when a client alleges that your advice or work caused them a financial loss — a missed filing deadline, a tax position that unravelled, an error in a set of accounts, a misjudged piece of advice. For an accountancy practice it is not a nice-to-have. Your professional body requires it, and it is the single policy that stands between an honest mistake and a claim that could otherwise threaten the firm you have just built.

You need it from day one because the exposure exists from your very first piece of chargeable work. There is no grace period during which mistakes do not count. The moment you sign off a return or send a client a piece of advice, you have a potential liability, and your cover should already be live.

Why "claims-made" changes how you buy it

PII is almost always written on a claims-made basis. This is the single most important technical feature to understand, so it is worth being precise. A claims-made policy responds to claims that are first made against you during the policy period — not to the work done during that period. So if you make an error in 2026 but the client does not discover it and bring a claim until 2028, it is your 2028 policy that must respond, not the one that was in force when you did the work.

Three consequences follow. First, you must keep cover continuously in force year after year — a gap is not just risky, it can leave old work uninsured. Second, when you renew or switch insurer, the concept of a retroactive date matters: it is the date from which your past work is covered, and you want it to reach back to when your practice began. Third — and this is the one start-ups forget — when you eventually stop practising, retire or sell up, you will need run-off cover.

Run-off: think about the end at the beginning

Because claims can surface years after the work, closing your practice does not close your exposure. Run-off cover keeps a claims-made policy responding after you have stopped trading, for work done while you were active. Professional bodies typically expect a departing practice to maintain run-off for a defined number of years. You do not need to buy it on day one — but it is worth knowing it exists now, because it is part of the true lifetime cost of running a practice, and it is a reason to build a continuous, well-documented insurance history from the very start.

The other covers a new firm should weigh

PII is the non-negotiable. Beyond it, a sensible new practice considers a handful of other covers. Only one is a legal requirement; the rest are judgement calls based on how you work. Here is an honest run-through of what each does and when it matters.

Employers' liability — a legal requirement once you employ staff

If you take on even one employee, employers' liability (EL) insurance is required by law in the UK under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, generally with a minimum limit of £5 million. It covers your liability if a member of staff is injured or becomes ill as a result of their work. There are limited exemptions — for example, a business with no employees, or in some cases a company where the only employee also owns the majority of shares — so if you are a genuine sole trader working alone, it may not apply to you yet. But the day you hire your first bookkeeper or junior, this stops being optional. It is worth planning for now so the requirement does not catch you out mid-recruitment.

Public liability

Public liability covers injury to a third party or damage to their property arising from your business — the classic example being a client who visits your office, or you visiting theirs. If clients will never set foot in your premises and you never attend theirs, the exposure is modest; if you hold face-to-face meetings, it is worth having. It is commonly bundled into an office or business package.

Cyber

An accountancy practice holds concentrated, sensitive data: client financials, tax references, payroll details, personal information. That makes you an attractive target and puts you squarely within data-protection obligations under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018. Cyber insurance can respond to a data breach, ransomware, business email compromise and the costs of notification, IT forensics and recovery. It is not mandatory, but for a modern practice that runs on cloud accounting software and email it is one of the more rational optional covers to hold. Note that PII and cyber cover different things — PII responds to professional errors, cyber to security and data incidents — and they are best considered together rather than assumed to overlap.

Office, contents and business interruption

If you take premises, buildings and contents cover protects your physical kit — desks, computers, servers. Business interruption cover sits alongside it and helps replace lost income if an insured event (a fire or flood, say) stops you working for a period. For a home-based start-up, check carefully: standard home insurance often excludes business use, so you may need to extend it or arrange a small separate policy. None of this is compulsory, but it is cheap peace of mind for the tools your practice runs on.

A quick word on what is not mandatory, so you are not oversold: beyond PII (required by your body) and EL (required by law once you employ), everything above is a considered choice. A good broker should explain why a cover fits your firm, not simply list everything available. If you want to talk through which of these your specific set-up actually needs, you can start a quote and tell us how you plan to work.

What a brand-new firm needs to provide — and why less history is simpler

There is a common worry that a start-up will struggle to get cover because it has no track record. In practice the opposite is often true: with no past work, there are no historical claims to disclose, no messy circumstances to explain, and no legacy exposures for an underwriter to price. A clean slate is easy to underwrite.

To get a quote, you will generally be asked for a fairly light set of information:

• The services you will offer — for example accounts preparation, tax returns, bookkeeping, payroll, audit (audit is separately regulated and changes the risk profile), or advisory work.
• Your estimated gross fee income for the first year. This drives both your premium and, often, the minimum PII limit your professional body expects.
• Your qualifications and professional body, and confirmation of your practising certificate and firm registration.
• Whether you will employ staff or use subcontractors.
• Your AML supervision arrangements.
• Any known claims or circumstances — which, for a genuine start-up, is usually a straightforward “none”.

Because your figures are estimates at launch, be honest and reasonable with them. If your fee income grows faster than expected during the year, tell your broker — keeping your insurer informed protects the validity of your cover.

Choosing your limits

The limit of indemnity is the most you can claim under the policy. For PII, start from your professional body's minimum requirement — often calculated by reference to your gross fee income — and then ask whether that minimum genuinely reflects the size of the engagements you will handle. A firm advising owner-managed businesses on modest returns has a different exposure to one signing off complex corporate work. Common limit options are offered in round figures such as £1 million, £2 million or £5 million; the right one is a conversation about the value of the work you do and the losses a single error could plausibly cause, not a number picked at random. It is usually straightforward to increase the limit as the practice grows.

Your “before you open” insurance checklist

Why a specialist broker helps a start-up

You could approach this yourself, but a broker who knows accountancy earns their keep in three ways at launch. They translate your professional body's PII regulations into a policy that actually satisfies them — the right limit, an acceptable excess, an approved insurer — so you are not left guessing whether your cover ticks the box. They right-size the optional covers to how you really work, rather than selling you a bundle you do not need. And they can place it quickly, which matters when your start date is fixed and everything else is competing for your attention.

A broker also stays useful after launch: adjusting your fee-income estimate as the practice grows, handling renewals so your claims-made cover never lapses, and being the person who already understands your firm if a claim ever lands. For a new practice, that continuity is worth having from the outset. See insurance for startups and scale-ups for how this sits alongside D&O and cyber.

About Apex

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is an FCA-authorised broker based in Bristol (FRN 724952). We work with professional-services firms, including accountancy practices, and can put together a start-up package — professional indemnity as the cornerstone, plus the other covers that fit your firm — quickly and without jargon. If you are about to open your doors, we can help you launch covered.

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