Reviewed by Matthew Bartlett, Director · Last reviewed 8 July 2026
Accountants' PI renewal is less compressed than the solicitors' 1 October set-piece, but it is no less exposed to poor handling. The regulatory framework — ICAEW Bye-law 61 for chartered accountants, the ACCA Global Practising Regulations for ACCA members, and the parallel regimes for AAT, CIOT and ATT — sets a minimum limit driven by fee income, and the renewal is the moment those numbers get re-examined. Fee income that has grown quietly over the year can push a firm through a limit band without anyone noticing until the underwriter asks the question.
Eight to twelve weeks before the renewal date is the working range. Accountants without a fixed regulator-set common renewal date renew across the calendar year, and that gives insurers more predictable capacity, but it also means the incumbent underwriter has less pressure to sharpen terms unless a broker is putting the account back into the market. The internal work — fee-income update, claims and circumstances review, sign-off on the proposal — usually takes a partner longer than expected. Starting the conversation with the broker in the eighth week rather than the third rewards the firm at every stage that follows.
Under section 3 of the Insurance Act 2015 the firm owes a duty of fair presentation. The renewal proposal will ask for the fee-income split by service line — audit and assurance, tax, insolvency, corporate finance, forensic, probate, financial-services referrals — because each line carries a different loss profile. It will ask for claims and notified circumstances going back five years, changes to partners or directors, and any regulatory correspondence. Under ICAEW Bye-law 61 the minimum limit is the greater of £1.5m or 2.5 times gross fee income up to a £3m ceiling, with a firm-wide aggregate that mirrors it. ACCA sets its own limits scaled to fee income. The 2.5× formula is the number to reconcile the proposal against before the broker sends it out.
Continuous cover provisions in ICAEW-approved wordings protect against innocent non-disclosure at the previous renewal, but they do not apply if the firm has changed insurer without the new insurer offering the same protection. That is a wording point that gets missed at renewal every year. Firms doing tax advisory work carry aggregation exposure similar to solicitors' — a scheme sold to multiple clients can aggregate into a single claim. Insolvency practice attracts specialist wordings and often a higher rate. Probate work triggers additional scrutiny. Firms with a financial-services referral arrangement should confirm the wording distinguishes advisory from referral risk. Run-off cover under ICAEW rules must be maintained for a minimum of two years after cessation for chartered firms; longer periods are strongly recommended by the Institute in specific circumstances.
95% of Apex clients renew with Apex, and the pattern behind that number matters more than the number itself. Firms renew because the broker did the work — not because the incumbent was cheap, and not because switching felt like too much effort. When a broker holds the file properly, the renewal starts earlier, the submission is drafted properly, insurers are approached who actually want the risk, and the wording differences are set out in plain English so a partnership can decide rather than defer. When the process is done that way, clients keep coming back. The 95% is the trailing evidence.
The ICAEW 2.5× fee-income formula sets a floor, capped at the £3m ceiling for smaller firms. A firm approaching the ceiling on formula alone often finds the ceiling is too low for the actual exposure. Tax advisory work, insolvency, corporate finance and probate all attract severity profiles that outpace turnover. Limit adequacy at renewal should be tested against the largest engagement on the file, the aggregation exposure across similar advice sold to multiple clients, and the historical severity picture for firms with similar work. The wording review sits alongside — a £3m limit with a defence-costs-inside clause reads very differently to £3m with defence-costs outside the limit. Both conversations belong in the eighth or ninth week before renewal, not the last week.
One named broker owns the account. The fee-income update happens in the eighth or ninth week before renewal, not the third, because the ICAEW 2.5× formula deserves a proper sense-check rather than a scramble. Every insurer with genuine appetite for accountancy risk on our panel is approached, and the submission distinguishes the fee-income streams by profile rather than by convention. Wording differences — continuous cover, aggregation treatment, defence-costs handling, retroactive dates, exclusions on tax-scheme advice — are set out in a comparison the firm can use. A single direct line runs through the year for mid-term work, so the notification of a circumstance in February