Leadership council seeks support for PI survey

Recent years have seen sharp increases in premiums for professional indemnity (PI) insurance and stricter curbs on the levels of cover have been introduced. Some firms have reported four-fold increases in PI policies, while others have said that they can no longer find cover.

This has been driven by various factors including a response to higher historic claims from the sector, as well as a cyclical hardening of the insurance market.

The government’s Construction Leadership Council (CLC) wants to do something about it but first needs to build an evidence base, identifying in detail the areas where the industry is facing the most difficulties.

It is therefore asking all concerned to take part in a confidential survey at www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/CLCPII

It asks companies to provide confidential feedback on the costs and policy exclusions that they have experienced when renewing their cover.

Samantha Peat, who leads the CLC professional indemnity insurance group, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has dominated headlines for the last year, but there is a second crisis that has been quietly growing for businesses across our industry.

“We are speaking to the UK government and insurers to find ways to help businesses that could otherwise face an uncertain future due to the nature of their PI renewals. We want businesses from across the industry to give us their views – whether you are affected or not – to help us shape the way we prepare a response from the whole sector.”

CLC chair Andy Mitchell said: “We have seen in the last year that our industry can deliver real positive change when we work together to tackle shared challenges. Given the feedback from across construction about the difficulties faced by companies, I want to strongly encourage companies to take part in this survey, letting us know about their experiences”

The survey will be live until 12th March 2021. Industry-level details of the results will be published by Construction Leadership Council and will be used to inform ongoing work to support the sector.

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