What insurance do I need after raising a Series A?

Reviewed by Matthew Bartlett, Director, Apex Insurance Brokers Limited · Last reviewed 2026-08-06

Closing a Series A is a milestone worth enjoying — and then, fairly quickly, a to-do list appears. Somewhere on it, usually near a lawyer's note or an investor condition, sits the word "insurance." It can feel like admin at exactly the moment you'd rather be hiring and shipping. The good news is that the insurance a business needs after a Series A is predictable. There's a short, sensible list, a clear order to work through it in, and a few genuine decisions that reward a proper conversation. This page walks you through it, step by step, the way we'd talk it through with a founder over a call.

Why does raising a Series A change my insurance needs?

A Series A tends to change three things at once, and each one touches insurance. First, you take on institutional investors who now sit on your cap table and often your board — which introduces a level of governance scrutiny you didn't have as a founder-run company. Second, headcount usually climbs quickly, which changes your obligations as an employer. Third, the contracts you sign get bigger and more demanding: enterprise customers, partners and suppliers start asking what cover you carry before they'll sign.

So the shift isn't really about "buying more insurance." It's that your risk profile has genuinely moved. The cover that was fine for a ten-person seed-stage company can leave real gaps for a forty-person Series A business with a board, a growing payroll and six-figure contracts. Working through the list below in the right order stops those gaps opening up.

First priority: put D&O in place if your term sheet requires it

For most founders, this is the item that appears first — often because it's written into the investment terms. Directors' & officers' insurance (D&O) protects the personal liability of the people running the company: founders, directors and senior officers. If a claim is brought alleging a wrongful act in how the business was managed — from an investor, a regulator, an employee or a third party — D&O can cover legal defence costs and, where applicable, damages, so that your directors' personal assets aren't the first line of defence.

An important point of accuracy: D&O is not a legal requirement. It isn't mandated by statute in the way employers' liability is. What's true is that it is commonly required by investors, and Series A is the stage where that requirement typically appears. Many term sheets and shareholders' agreements include a condition to put D&O cover in place, sometimes to an agreed limit, within a set period after completion. If yours does, this moves to the top of the list — not because the law says so, but because you've agreed to it as a condition of the raise.

Term sheet wording varies, so it's worth reading the exact clause with your lawyer and broker together rather than assuming a standard limit. A few things are worth checking early:

• The specific limit of indemnity your investors expect (this is often stated, and illustrative limits such as £1m or £5m are common starting points to discuss, not defaults you must accept).
• Whether cover needs to be in place by completion or within a defined window afterwards.
• How the policy responds to newly appointed board members, including investor-nominated directors.

Because D&O involves your board and your investors, it's one of the parts of the list we'd always suggest talking through rather than clicking to buy. If you'd like the detail, our guide to directors' & officers' insurance, explained covers what it does and doesn't do.

Larger or more complex risk? Speak directly to a director — call 0117 325 0027 or email info@apexinsurancebrokers.co.uk.

Is my employers' liability still correct as I hire?

If you employ staff, employers' liability (EL) insurance is a legal requirement in the UK under the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, with only narrow exceptions (for example, some businesses employing only close family members or certain public bodies). It covers your liability if an employee becomes ill or is injured because of the work they do for you. Failing to hold valid EL cover where it's required can expose a business to significant penalties, so this is not an area to leave to guesswork.

Most Series A companies already have EL in place. The reason it belongs on the post-raise checklist is that a round is usually followed by a hiring wave, and the details of your EL cover should keep up. Worth confirming as you scale:

• That your cover reflects your actual and projected headcount, not the number you had when the policy was first arranged.
• That new categories of worker — your first operations hires, contractors who may count as employees, staff in new locations — are properly captured.
• That the certificate is accessible to employees, as required.

The mechanics of EL are often bundled with other covers, so a quick review at the point of raising is usually enough to confirm it's right rather than a full rebuild.

Do my professional indemnity limits still match my contracts?

Professional indemnity (PI) insurance responds if a client alleges that your advice, service or work caused them a financial loss — a defect, an error, a missed obligation, or intellectual property issues depending on the wording. For software, agency, consulting and many service businesses, it's frequently the cover that customers ask about by name.

The Series A trigger here is contractual. Post-raise, you tend to sign larger and more demanding customer agreements, and enterprise contracts increasingly specify a minimum PI limit you must carry — sometimes £1m, sometimes £5m or higher for larger deals. If your existing PI limit sits below what a new contract demands, you can find yourself unable to sign, or signing while technically in breach of a warranty. So the job after a raise is to line your current limit up against the contracts you're now pursuing.

Read the insurance clauses in your pipeline of deals and check the required limit, whether cover must be maintained for a period after the contract ends, and whether specific extensions are named. If your biggest prospective contract needs more than you hold, that's a limit to revisit before signing rather than after. For a fuller walkthrough, see our guide to professional indemnity insurance for startups.

Should I arrange cyber cover now?

For most Series A companies, yes — and if it isn't already in place, this is the stage to arrange it. By the time you've raised an A, you almost certainly hold customer data, run on cloud infrastructure, and depend on systems staying up to operate. Cyber insurance is built around that reality: it can help with the costs of a data breach or ransomware event, business interruption from an outage, incident response and forensics, notification obligations, and liability to affected third parties.

Two things make cyber worth prioritising rather than deferring. First, the exposure is real from day one of a scaling business, not something that only matters at Series C. Second, enterprise customers and partners increasingly ask whether you carry cyber cover as part of their vendor due diligence, so having it in place can smooth commercial conversations as well as protect you. Insurers will typically want to understand your security basics — things like multi-factor authentication, backups and access controls — so getting your house in order slightly improves both your risk and the ease of arranging cover. If you want the detail, our startup cyber insurance guide goes deeper.

What about public liability and other covers?

Depending on how you operate, a few other covers may belong on the list. Public liability responds if your business causes injury to a third party or damage to their property — relevant if you have an office people visit, attend events, or do any work on client premises. If you hold significant equipment or fit out an office, contents and business equipment cover is worth confirming. And if you're expanding internationally, cover that only contemplates UK operations may need revisiting.

The honest answer is that these are secondary to the four priorities above for most software and services startups, but they're exactly the kind of thing a short review conversation surfaces. Rather than trying to self-diagnose every possibility, it's usually more efficient to talk through how you actually operate and let the gaps reveal themselves.

How often should I review cover after the round?

This is the step founders most often skip, and it's the one that quietly keeps everything else correct. A Series A business changes fast: headcount, contracts, product, geography and even legal structure can all move within a single year. Insurance arranged in month one can drift out of line by month nine simply because the company grew.

A practical cadence looks like this:

• At renewal (annually): a proper review of every policy against where the business now is.
• At each material change: a significant new contract, a big jump in headcount, a new product line, a move into a new country, or a change to your board.
• Ahead of the next round: so your cover story is clean when the next set of investors runs due diligence.

You don't have to track all of this alone — a big part of what a broker does is hold that cadence for you, flag when a change matters, and adjust cover before a gap becomes a problem. That's the difference between insurance as a one-off purchase and insurance as something that keeps pace with the company you're building. If a raise is on the horizon, our note on insurance due diligence before a funding round is a useful companion.

Your first-weeks checklist

To pull it together, here's the order we'd suggest working through in the weeks after your Series A closes:

• Read your term sheet and shareholders' agreement for any D&O requirement, and arrange cover to the agreed limit and timeline.
• Confirm employers' liability is in place and correct for your growing team, as required by law once you employ staff.
• Check professional indemnity limits against the contracts you're now signing, and raise them if a deal demands it.
• Arrange cyber cover if it isn't already in place.
• Consider public liability and any other cover specific to how you operate.
• Set a review cadence — annual renewal, plus a check at every material change and before the next round.

None of this needs to derail your first weeks post-raise. Worked through in order, with someone who does this for founders every week, it's a short exercise that gives you one less thing to worry about while you get on with the reason you raised in the first place.

Prefer to start the conversation before getting quotes? You can speak to an Apex specialist and we'll help you prioritise what actually matters for your stage.

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This article is general information, not advice on a specific policy or a recommendation to buy any product.