Some categories of regulated professional cannot buy their professional indemnity cover from the UK's direct-writer insurers. It is not a marketing choice by the broker who tells them so — it is a policy position the insurers set out on their own websites. This page explains which professions are affected, why the exclusion sits in the direct-writer model rather than in the insurance market more broadly, and what a professional in an excluded category needs from a broker instead.
A "direct writer" in UK small-business insurance means an insurer that sells its own product directly to the customer, without a broker in the middle. Direct Line for Business, Simply Business (as an operator of insurer panels) and Aviva Direct are among the recognisable names in this space. The commercial model rests on volume: a single insurer, a small number of standard products, an online journey that quotes on a limited set of trades, and no external market comparison beneath the surface.
The result is a service that works well for standard risks — a florist, a bookkeeper, an office-based consultant with modest turnover — where the underwriting can be automated and the policy wording is generic. It works less well where the profession's exposure, the regulator's wording requirements or the compulsory limit sit outside the standard box.
One direct writer that publishes its own exclusion list is Direct Line for Business, whose professional indemnity page names the trades it will not quote for. At the time of writing, the published list is:
The wording is Direct Line's own, taken from the "What trades do we cover?" section of its professional indemnity page. It applies specifically to Direct Line for Business; other direct writers publish different appetite statements, and appetites move over time. What matters for the reader here is not the specific brand but the pattern: the professions most affected by regulator wording requirements and compulsory PI floors are the ones the direct-writer model tends to refuse.
The reasons are structural rather than commercial. Four factors combine.
Professional indemnity claims from regulated professions tend to cluster. A single defective legal opinion, a single misstated tax return, a single design defect in a building, a single mis-sold pension can trigger connected claims across every client the professional served in a given period. Aggregation makes losses volatile in a way that automated pricing struggles to capture, and severity means individual claims can absorb multi-million-pound reserves.
Several excluded professions must hold cover on wording set by their regulator, not by the insurer's standard PI form. Solicitors of England and Wales sit under the SRA Minimum Terms and Conditions (MTC), which impose "any one claim" limits, restrict avoidance rights and require six-year run-off. Chartered accountants sit under ICAEW Bye-law 61 and the 2.5× fee-income formula in the ICAEW PII Regulations. FCA-authorised financial advisers sit under MIPRU 3 and, where the business involves investments, COBS 9 — both of which shape the wording and complaints exposure the insurer must accept. Direct-writer forms do not carry these clauses as standard, and rewriting them on a case-by-case basis defeats the automation model.
Regulator-set minimum limits often exceed the ceilings a direct writer will underwrite from its own account. The SRA MTC requires £2 million for most firms and £3 million for incorporated practices per claim. ICAEW rules require the greater of £100,000 or 2.5× annual fee income. MIPRU 3 sets a compulsory minimum for FCA-authorised firms (denominated in euros in the rulebook, with sterling equivalents updated periodically). The RICS scale for surveyors runs to £1 million and above on a turnover-band basis. Direct Line for Business publishes cover up to £5 million, and for many trades sits well below that ceiling; where the regulator's floor meets the insurer's cap, the trade cannot be quoted from the standard panel.
The Building Safety Act 2022 s.135 tail on design and consultancy work for higher-risk buildings extends limitation for engineers, architects and surveyors to fifteen years prospectively and thirty years retrospectively for certain claims. That kind of tail, combined with the aggregation profile of a structural or fire-engineering opinion, sits outside the appetite of an insurer that expects to close a claim inside a standard six-year window.
Reading Direct Line's list against the regulator landscape gives a clearer picture of who is affected.
Regulated in England and Wales by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Cover must sit under the SRA MTC, placed with a participating insurer on the qualifying-insurers list, with £2 million or £3 million per-claim limits and a six-year run-off obligation on cessation. In Scotland the Law Society of Scotland Master Policy is placed through a nominated broker; in Northern Ireland the LSNI Master Policy applies. None of those arrangements is available from a direct writer.
ICAEW members in practice are bound by Bye-law 61 and the PII Regulations, which set the minimum limit at the greater of £100,000 or 2.5× annual fee income, subject to a floor for larger firms, and require two-year run-off on cessation. ACCA sets a comparable structure in its own PII rulebook. The wording requirements sit outside direct-writer product forms.
MIPRU 3 sets a compulsory minimum limit for FCA-authorised firms and requires the insurer to accept the burden of complaints referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service. Investment firms under IPRU-INV carry a comparable requirement, and mortgage intermediaries are similarly caught. Neither the wording nor the FOS exposure fits the direct-writer template.
Chartered engineers registered through the Engineering Council — via bodies such as the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institution of Structural Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology — are not subject to a single statutory PI regime, but their exposure is shaped by contractual requirements from clients and by BSA 2022 s.135 where their work relates to higher-risk buildings. Structural, fire and civil engineers commonly need limits of £2 million to £10 million on a claims-made basis with a defined run-off provision — a specification that sits with specialist engineering insurers, not with the direct-writer market.
The gap is not that the market cannot cover these trades — it plainly can, and specialist insurers write substantial PI premium in each of them every year — but that the direct-writer route cannot. What the excluded professional needs is:
Fair-analysis placement across specialist and Lloyd's insurers. A broker with agencies across the specialist and Lloyd's market can approach several insurers in parallel, matching the trade to the appetite rather than to a single insurer's form.
A broker who knows the regulator's wording. Placing SRA MTC business, ICAEW PII Regulations business or MIPRU-compliant business requires the broker to check the wording clause by clause against the regulator's minimum. That is a documentation exercise, and it is the broker's responsibility to get it right.
Limits above direct-writer caps. Where the regulator demands £2 million or £3 million per claim, or where a client contract specifies £5 million or £10 million aggregate, the broker needs the market relationships to secure those limits — and to layer them where a single insurer will not carry the whole line.
Run-off availability. A regulated profession is often required to arrange run-off cover for two, three or six years after cessation. That is a placement conversation, not a click-through.
Named claims support. When a claim or circumstance is notified, the professional needs a broker who can help present the notification in a form that protects their position under the policy and under their regulator's rules.
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is a directly FCA-authorised general insurance intermediary (firm reference number 724952), focused on professions PI. The firm is directed by Matthew Bartlett, who holds the SMF3 (Executive Director), SMF16 (Compliance Oversight) and SMF17 (MLRO) senior manager approvals. That structure matters: the broker your file sits with is accountable at named-individual level for the firm's conduct and complaint handling, rather than being an appointed representative operating under a third party's authorisation.
Apex places PI cover through a panel of specialist and Lloyd's insurers on a fair-analysis basis for the professions most commonly excluded from direct writers: solicitors under the SRA MTC and the Scottish and Northern Ireland Master Policy arrangements; ICAEW and ACCA accountants under the relevant PII Regulations; FCA-authorised financial advisers and mortgage brokers under MIPRU 3 and, where applicable, COBS 9; RICS surveyors under the Rules of Conduct Rule 9 scale; ARB and RIBA architects under Standard 8; and Engineering Council-registered engineers, including those with BSA 2022 s.135 exposure.
Placement is documented, the demands-and-needs statement records the basis of the recommendation, and remuneration is disclosed on request under ICOBS 4.4. If the wording does not meet the regulator's minimum, Apex says so in writing before you sign; if a competing quote does the job better on the specific point that matters to your file, Apex says so too.
If you are a solicitor, chartered or certified accountant, FCA-authorised firm (including financial advisers and mortgage brokers), or an engineer, Direct Line for Business's PI page states in its own words that it does not cover you. Other direct writers publish similar lists that overlap with this one. Individual insurer appetites shift over time, so a reliable approach is to check the direct writer's page on the day you enquire, rather than rely on a summary written last year.
Yes. The refusal is a function of the direct writer's operating model, not of the underlying insurance market. Specialist and Lloyd's insurers write PI for every excluded regulated profession named above. A broker with the right agencies can approach several of them for a single risk and select on the specific wording, limit and run-off obligations the file needs.
The alternatives are specialist PI insurers accessed through a broker, professional-body master-policy arrangements where they exist (such as the LSS Master Policy for Scottish solicitors and the LSNI Master Policy for solicitors in Northern Ireland), and — for larger firms — direct arrangements with a chosen underwriter placed through their own broker. A directly FCA-authorised broker is accountable at firm level for the placement; an appointed representative places under a principal's authorisation.
No. Appetite varies by insurer and moves over time. What holds across the direct-writer segment is the pattern rather than the specific list — regulator-wording professions, compulsory-limit professions and long-tail statutory-exposure professions are the ones the model finds hardest to underwrite at scale. A broker's job is to know which insurer is writing which appetite this month, and to route the risk accordingly.
Apex is a broker, not an insurer. That means the firm holds no capital against the risk itself; it places the risk with an FCA-authorised insurer chosen from a panel of specialist and Lloyd's markets, and represents the client on the placement and on any subsequent claim. Apex is directly authorised by the FCA under firm reference number 724952, is directed by a named individual holding SMF3, SMF16 and SMF17 approvals, and publishes its sector-mechanics reasoning on this website so that the placement logic is on the record.
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Firm reference number 724952. Registered in England and Wales, company number 07014570.