Reviewed by Matthew Bartlett, Director · Last reviewed 8 July 2026
Solicitors' PI renewal is the single set-piece date in the professional-indemnity calendar. Under the Solicitors Regulation Authority's Minimum Terms and Conditions every practising firm renews cover on 1 October, which compresses the entire solicitors' market into a short window. Preparation done in June and July pays back in October — a firm that walks into the renewal late finds qualifying insurers already closing off capacity, and the room to negotiate wording or limits narrows sharply.
Twelve weeks before 1 October is the sensible position for any firm with claims history, growing turnover or conveyancing exposure. For a clean, stable practice eight weeks is workable. The reason is practical rather than rhetorical: the SRA-qualifying panel has narrowed over the past decade and the insurers that remain manage their capacity actively. Once an underwriter's book is full for the year, no amount of quality in the submission will re-open it. Firms that leave things until September routinely find themselves paying more, or accepting narrower wordings, than would have been available in July.
Under section 3 of the Insurance Act 2015 the firm owes a duty of fair presentation. That obligation is heavier than many partners remember. It requires disclosure of every material circumstance the firm knows or ought to know, presented in a manner reasonably clear and accessible to a prudent insurer. In practice the renewal proposal asks for a fee-income split by work type, a five-year claims and circumstances history, partnership changes, mergers and acquisitions, regulatory correspondence with the SRA, and cyber and financial-crime controls. Notified circumstances — matters that could give rise to a claim — must go in even if no claim has yet been made. Understating the position at proposal risks avoidance or proportionate remedy under the Act.
The aggregation clause at MTC clause 2.5 treats claims arising from one act or omission, or from a series of related acts or omissions, as one claim, which can turn multiple related losses into a single £2m per-claim limit exposure (£3m for incorporated practices). Conveyancing-heavy firms carry the market's most punished risk profile at renewal. Continuous cover under the MTC protects against gaps but does not protect against a firm missing the deadline. Successor-practice rules at MTC clauses 1.1 and 6.1 mean a firm that has absorbed another practice inherits its liabilities — that has to be worked into the presentation. Cladding and building-safety review work sits on many firms' notification records. And run-off cover for six years after cessation sits at 300% of the last annual premium under MTC clause 5.6, which is a number to plan for now, not at exit.
95% of Apex clients renew with Apex. It is the number we measure because it reflects the only test that matters in this work — whether the broker handled the renewal properly enough for the firm to want the same broker again next year. The renewal is not a repricing exercise; it is a re-underwriting exercise, and the difference matters. A firm whose broker simply asks the incumbent for indicative terms and lets the underwriter set the number will pay whatever the underwriter has decided the account is worth this year. A firm whose broker works a panel, drafts the submission properly, and negotiates wording differences between quotes gets an outcome that reflects the risk rather than the incumbent's appetite on the day. That difference is where the retention comes from.
The MTC minimum of £2m per claim (£3m for incorporated practices) is a floor, not a target. A firm doing meaningful conveyancing, commercial property, probate or litigation work regularly holds cover well above the minimum, and the case for the top-up limit needs to be reviewed each year rather than rolled forward. A single high-value transaction that goes wrong can breach the minimum in one claim. The aggregation clause can make several linked matters do the same thing. The right limit review looks at the largest matters on the file, the aggregation exposure across the book, and the historical claim severity for firms of similar profile. That conversation is easier to have in July than in mid-September when the quotes are already back.
One named broker owns the file from renewal to renewal. The submission is drafted with the firm rather than sent as a form to be completed, because the fair-presentation duty is easier to meet when the broker has read the file. Every SRA-qualifying insurer on our panel is approached where it makes sense to approach them. Wording differences — aggregation, defence-costs treatment inside or outside the limit, retroactive dates, dishonesty exclusions, discovery periods — are set out in plain English so the firm can decide rather than accept a recommendation. A single direct line runs through the year for mid-term notifications, claims and circumstances, and the annual conversation about limit adequacy. When something surfaces in July that would embarrass the firm in September, the earlier it is on the broker's desk, the better it can be positioned