Chartered legal executive (CILEX) professional indemnity insurance — the UK requirement

Chartered legal executives regulated by CILEx Regulation have a specific PI obligation when practising as authorised probate practitioners, litigators, advocates or CILEX-ACCA-Probate members. This reference covers the framework.

The regulatory position

CILEx Regulation is the approved regulator of legal executives in England and Wales under the Legal Services Act 2007. Fellows of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives (Fellows and Chartered Legal Executives) who hold CILEx Regulation practising rights are regulated for professional purposes by CILEx Regulation, not the SRA.

The CILEx Regulation Handbook sets out the PI insurance requirement. The core position:

• Legal executives practising as employees within SRA-regulated firms are covered by the firm's SRA MTC PI. No separate CILEX policy required.
• Legal executives holding a CILEx-Regulation authorisation to practise on their own account (as a CILEX Practitioner or Chartered Legal Executive Practitioner) must hold CILEx Regulation-compliant PI at a minimum limit of £2,000,000 per claim.
• Where the legal executive practises in a specified reserved legal activity — litigation, advocacy, probate, notarial acts, conveyancing — the CILEx Regulation minimum applies.

The distinction that matters most in practice is whether you are employed or authorised on your own account. If you work inside an SRA firm, the firm's compulsory policy sits over your work and you have nothing separate to arrange. The moment you hold a CILEx Regulation authorisation to deliver reserved work in your own name — even alongside a day job — the obligation to hold a compliant policy attaches to you personally, and the responsibility for keeping it in force, for renewing it on time and for arranging run-off when you stop, rests with you rather than an employer.

What a compliant policy actually covers

A CILEX-compliant professional indemnity policy is a civil liability contract. Its purpose is to respond when a client, or occasionally a third party, alleges that the practitioner's professional work caused them financial loss. The headline limit of £2m is the amount available to meet the claim; but the parts of the wording that determine whether a policy is genuinely fit for a legal practice sit underneath the limit:

• Civil liability on a broad basis — cover for negligence, breach of duty, and typically breach of contract, breach of confidence, defamation and dishonesty of employees, rather than a narrow "negligence only" trigger.
• Defence costs — the cost of investigating and defending an allegation, which on a legal-sector claim can rival or exceed the damages. It matters whether these costs sit inside the limit or in addition to it; the more generous wordings provide costs in addition.
• Loss of documents and data — the cost of reconstituting files, wills, deeds or conveyancing paperwork that is lost, damaged or corrupted.
• Ombudsman awards and complaint handling — cover for determinations by the Legal Ombudsman, which can direct compensation and remediation even where a court would not find negligence.
• Retroactive cover — because PI is written on a claims-made basis, the policy in force when a claim is made responds, provided the work was done after the retroactive date. Practitioners moving from employment to their own account should confirm the retroactive date reaches back over all the work they remain exposed on.

Reading the schedule alone tells you almost nothing; the exclusions, the aggregation clause and the definition of "civil liability" are where a policy is won or lost.

The specific exposures for CILEX practitioners

Legal executives on their own account tend to concentrate in a handful of high-frequency, document-heavy areas — conveyancing, probate and estate administration, family, and litigation support — and it is the character of that work, rather than its volume, that drives the risk. Conveyancing carries the classic combination of large transaction values, tight completion deadlines, and a chain of reliance running to lenders as well as buyers, so a single missed search, a misread title entry or a failure to identify a restriction can crystallise a loss equal to the full purchase price. Probate and estate administration expose the practitioner to beneficiaries who may not surface for years, to inheritance-tax deadlines, and to distribution errors that are difficult to unwind once money has left the estate. Litigation and advocacy work carry a distinctive risk profile — the sums in dispute may be modest, but a missed limitation date or a procedural default can convert a winnable matter into a total loss plus adverse costs.

Because these practitioners frequently take over work, referrals or entire caseloads that previously ran through SRA firms, they also inherit exposures that pre-date their own involvement. That makes the retroactive date and the continuity of cover between the old and new arrangement one of the first things a broker should check.

CILEX ACCA-Probate practitioners

The CILEX-ACCA-Probate route allows a small number of legal executives to offer probate services as a stand-alone activity. These practitioners must hold £2m PI cover and comply with CILEx Regulation's probate-specific supervisory rules.

Practitioners on this route are often accountants by background who have added a discrete legal authorisation, and their PI needs sit at the intersection of two regimes. The professional indemnity policy that covers their accountancy work will not automatically extend to reserved probate activity, and the reserved-activity authorisation carries its own compulsory requirement. The practical answer is usually a single policy written to satisfy the CILEx Regulation minimum while also picking up the wider professional work, so there is no gap between the two hats and no argument at claims stage about which insurer responds.

How the limit and excess are sized

The £2m per claim figure is a floor, not a target. Whether a practitioner should carry more depends less on fee income than on the largest single matter passing across the desk. A conveyancer routinely handling property at £750,000 has a plausible worst-case loss well within £2m; one acting on commercial premises, development land or high-value estates can be exposed to a single claim that exhausts a £2m limit before defence costs are counted. The sensible discipline is to size the limit against the value of the largest transaction or estate handled in the year, then add headroom for the interest, consequential loss and costs that ride on top of the primary loss.

Two further points shape the sum insured. First, aggregation: a £2m limit that aggregates several related files into one claim behaves very differently from one that treats each file separately, so the effective protection depends on the aggregation wording as much as the number. Second, the excess (the practitioner's own retained share of each claim) trades against premium — a higher excess reduces the annual cost but must be an amount the practice can actually fund at short notice, because it is payable on defence costs as well as damages.

Where CILEX PI differs from SRA PI

The minimum limit is the same as SRA MTC (£2m per claim), but the market is materially thinner. Whereas the SRA has a qualifying-insurer list of participating insurers, CILEx Regulation does not — any FCA-authorised UK insurer can write CILEX-compliant PI. In practice, only three or four insurers regularly quote for CILEX practitioners on their own account.

Aggregation wording is not prescribed by CILEx Regulation. Firms should ensure the aggregation clause in their policy matches the SRA MTC standard "matters or transactions that are related" or better, especially where the practitioner does volumes of conveyancing or probate.

The absence of a prescribed minimum-terms wording cuts both ways. It gives an experienced broker room to negotiate broader cover than the SRA baseline, but it also means the burden of checking that a policy is genuinely compliant — and genuinely adequate — falls on the practitioner and broker rather than on a regulator-approved template. A policy that meets the £2m figure can still fall short on aggregation, on the treatment of defence costs, or on retroactive cover.

Claims patterns

• Conveyancing errors — most common where the practitioner has taken over from SRA-firm conveyancing routes.
• Probate delays and disbursement errors.
• Advocacy errors — smaller quantum but adverse cost consequences.
• Retention and money-laundering-related notifications.

Realistic claim scenarios and which cover responds

The value of a policy is easiest to see through the way it behaves on a live matter. A few representative examples:

• The missed restriction. A conveyancing practitioner fails to report a restrictive covenant that prevents the buyer's intended use. The buyer claims the diminution in value plus wasted costs. The civil-liability section responds to the alleged negligence, and the defence-costs cover funds the investigation and any settlement negotiation — which is why costs-in-addition wordings matter when the loss already approaches the limit.
• The under-distributed estate. A probate practitioner distributes an estate before a late-surfacing beneficiary is identified, and money has to be recovered or made good. The policy responds to the professional error; the loss-of-documents extension can also engage if the underlying file or will has been lost.
• The limitation default. A practitioner supporting litigation misses a limitation date, extinguishing an otherwise good claim. The measure of loss is the value of the lost claim, and adverse-costs exposure can follow — a modest-value matter producing a disproportionate claim, which is exactly why the limit should be sized against worst case, not average fee.
• The complaint that becomes an award. A client complains to the Legal Ombudsman about delay and service. Even short of negligence, an ombudsman determination can direct compensation; a policy with ombudsman-award cover meets it, whereas a bare civil-liability wording may not.

In each case the practical question at claims stage is not "is there a policy?" but "which section responds, are defence costs inside or outside the limit, and does the retroactive date reach the work in question?" Those are answered when the policy is placed, not when the claim arrives.

Run-off cover

CILEx Regulation requires compliant run-off cover for at least six years after cessation of practice, aligned with the Limitation Act 1980 primary period. See our limitation-periods reference for the fifteen-year long-stop and s.14A extension implications.

Run-off matters because PI is claims-made: once you stop practising, a live annual policy no longer exists to respond, yet claims can still arrive years after the last file was closed. The six-year requirement mirrors the primary limitation period, but the fifteen-year long-stop and the s.14A date-of-knowledge extension mean a claim can in principle surface later, which is why continuous run-off — rather than a single year — is the prudent position, and why practitioners planning retirement or a move back into employment should budget for it well in advance of their last renewal.

Placement in practice

A specialist broker familiar with the CILEX segment will approach the two or three insurers that quote regularly. Because the underwriting market is narrow, timing matters — leave-it-to-the-last-minute renewals often produce narrow options or Extended-Policy-Period equivalents.

A clean, well-presented submission does much of the work. Underwriters in this niche look closely at the split of work by area, the largest transaction or estate handled, the claims and circumstances history, and the anti-money-laundering and file-review procedures in place. Presenting that clearly, four to six weeks before renewal, tends to produce more competitive terms than a rushed submission at the eleventh hour — particularly where the practitioner does conveyancing, which is the single work-type most likely to narrow appetite.

Frequently asked

Do I need my own PI if I only do occasional reserved work?

If you hold a CILEx Regulation authorisation to practise on your own account, the compulsory minimum applies to that authorised work regardless of volume. It is the authorisation, not the number of files, that triggers the obligation. Employees inside an SRA firm are covered by the firm's policy and need nothing separate.

Is £2m enough?

£2m per claim is the regulatory floor. Whether it is adequate depends on the largest single matter you handle — the value of the biggest property, estate or dispute passing across your desk — plus the defence costs and consequential loss that sit on top. Where individual transactions approach or exceed the limit, carrying a higher limit is worth pricing.

What happens to cover if I stop practising?

Because PI responds to claims made while a policy is in force, you need run-off cover once you cease. CILEx Regulation requires at least six years, aligned with the Limitation Act 1980 primary period, though the fifteen-year long-stop means later claims remain possible. Arrange it before your final renewal lapses rather than after.

Why are there so few insurers?

Unlike the SRA, CILEx Regulation does not operate a qualifying-insurer list, so any FCA-authorised insurer may write compliant cover — but in practice only three or four choose to quote for practitioners on their own account. That is a market-appetite feature, not a regulatory one, and it makes early, well-presented submissions and specialist placement more important.

I'm a CILEX-ACCA-Probate practitioner — is my accountancy PI enough?

Usually not on its own. An accountancy PI policy will not automatically extend to reserved probate activity, which carries its own compulsory requirement. The cleaner arrangement is a single policy written to satisfy the CILEx Regulation minimum while also covering your wider professional work, so there is no gap between the two roles.

Related Apex references

• Solicitors PI Insurance UK Guide 2026 — sister-profession context
• Limitation periods in professional negligence
• Aggregation clauses by regulator
• Run-off cover explained