Architects renewing professional indemnity cover are bound by the Insurance Act 2015. Section 3 sets out the duty of fair presentation: the practice must disclose every material circumstance it knows or ought to know, in a manner reasonably clear and accessible to a prudent insurer. The duty bites at inception, at renewal, and on any material variation mid-term. For architects in 2026 the single largest disclosure trap is fire safety — cladding correspondence, Building Safety Act 2022 letters, Higher-Risk Building (HRB) work, EWS1 disputes and principal-designer duties under the CDM Regulations 2015. None of these needs to have crystallised into a formal claim to be material.
Architects often assume the ARB Architects Code covers their disclosure obligations. It does not. The ARB Code imposes professional obligations to ARB and to clients. The Insurance Act 2015 imposes a separate statutory duty owed to the renewing insurer. Both apply in parallel. A disclosure acceptable to ARB may still be a qualifying breach under section 8 of the Insurance Act if the practice has withheld a circumstance the insurer would have wanted to know about.
The test in section 3 is whether the circumstance would influence the judgement of a prudent insurer in deciding whether to take the risk and on what terms. For an architectural practice the following are routinely material:
Section 4 of the Insurance Act requires the practice to make a reasonable search of information available to it. For an architectural practice that means more than asking the senior partner what they remember. The search should cover project leaders, associates, the QA register, the complaints log, the email accounts of anyone with client-facing responsibility, and — critically — sub-consultants and outgoing staff who held material project knowledge. Where a practice has merged, acquired another firm, or taken on staff from a closed practice, the inherited project history forms part of the knowledge the practice ought to know.
Worked example (hypothetical). An architectural practice designed a five-storey residential block in 2014. The cladding system was specified to the building regulations in force at the time. In April 2026 the practice receives an informal letter from the residents' association asking what specification was used and whether the practice retains the design drawings. No claim has been intimated. No solicitor is on the letter. Under section 3 the practice must consider whether the inquiry is a material circumstance at renewal. The conservative position is to disclose to the renewing insurer, describing the letter neutrally and confirming that no claim has been made. The alternative — treating the inquiry as too speculative to mention — risks a qualifying breach if it later becomes a formal claim and the insurer establishes it would have charged higher premium, imposed an aggregate limit, or declined the risk.
Architects often face a judgement call: disclose every speculative inquiry and risk an inflated renewal premium, or hold back and risk a non-disclosure dispute later. The Insurance Act does not require certainty. It requires fair presentation of what is known or ought to be known. Where a practice is genuinely uncertain whether a circumstance is material, the safer route is to disclose and let the underwriter take the view. Related guidance sits in the architects PI pillar guide, with parallel disclosure issues for novated design teams in the design and build contractors PI guide and structural matters in the engineers PI guide.
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Firm reference number 724952. This entry is general information, not advice on any particular policy.