Reviewed by Matthew Bartlett, Director · Last reviewed 8 July 2026
A specialist professional indemnity broker for accountants places cover that satisfies ICAEW, ACCA, CIOT and ATT requirements, prices the exposure correctly for the fee-mix a firm actually has, and handles a claim against a partner in a way that does not undermine the partnership. Accountants sit under a body of regulator-set PI rules that generalist brokers rarely read, and the result is cover placed at the wrong limit, on a wording that misses the wrong exclusions, and defended by an insurer who has never seen an accountant's file before.
ICAEW members in practice must hold PI cover in line with ICAEW Bye-law 61 and the associated PII Regulations. The regulations set a formula linking minimum limit to gross fee income, prescribe minimum limits and run-off period, and set out categories of business the firm must be authorised to conduct. ACCA has its own PII regulations for practising members, with a comparable framework and its own limit formula. Chartered tax advisers under CIOT and taxation technicians under ATT sit under their own PII rules again.
A specialist broker asks which body regulates the practice on day one, quotes to the correct limit basis, and knows which wordings the regulator's technical staff would accept without comment. This is not something a broker can improvise; the rules are formal, updated periodically, and enforced.
The obvious difference is wording review. Accountants' PI wordings vary widely in how they treat insolvency work, audit work, tax advice, corporate finance, financial reporting for regulated entities, and pension or trust administration. Each of those areas has caused reported losses and each is treated inconsistently across the market. A specialist reads the wording end to end before binding and flags the specific exposures the firm actually runs.
The second difference is the submission. Under section 3 of the Insurance Act 2015 the firm owes a duty of fair presentation. A specialist broker sequences the submission around gross fee income by service line, historic and current audit engagements, insolvency appointments held, tax advisory work with contentious elements, the firm's involvement in schemes disclosed under DOTAS, and prior circumstances notified or reserved. That structure is what a specialist accountants' underwriter expects to see.
The third difference is the claims relationship. Accountants' claims often move slowly and involve regulator engagement. A specialist broker manages the notification, drafts the client-facing narrative in a way that protects the client's position without prejudicing cover, and stays involved through settlement.
Ask the broker whether they can apply the ICAEW 2.5-times-gross-fee-income formula and where it caps. Ask whether the wording covers insolvency work done as an office-holder and whether that treatment matches your firm's licensing status. Ask about the run-off requirement following cessation and how the market prices a two-year single-payment run-off compared with a longer arrangement. Ask about coverage for tax planning schemes and whether that coverage narrows after HMRC challenge. Ask whether the wording responds to a DPB-supervised licence for investment business.
If the broker cannot answer without leaving the room to check, they are not a specialist accountants' broker. The right broker treats those questions as basic.
Apex is a named-broker firm. A director-level broker owns the placement, reads the wording, structures the submission, and represents the firm to the underwriter. Around 95 per cent of our clients renew with us year on year, which is our internal measure of whether the approach is working.
We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference number 724952) and hold professional indemnity cover in line with MIPRU 3. We place accountants' PI across Lloyd's syndicates and specialist company markets that write the profession, matching limit and excess to the ICAEW or ACCA formula and to the risk the firm's fee mix actually carries. Submissions are structured for fair presentation and returned with a written explanation of terms.
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Want a specialist PI broker for accountants? A named broker reads every submission and comes back with terms within one working day.