Solicitors’ Professional indemnity renewal 2025: the implications of block notifications

Many law firms renew their professional indemnity insurance on 1 October 2025. Some may hit problems on either price or availability caused by discovery of exposure to multiple related claims or activities of a rogue partner or employee misusing client money or involved in mortgage fraud. Known as a ‘block’ notification, a law firm may notify its insurer about a large number of related claims or potential claims at once, rather than reporting them individually.

This may also expose a firm to excesses in both the current and later policy years – when insurers, armed with knowledge of the issues, may have increased the amount of the excess or removed an aggregate cap.

Examples of such a scenario include student let and other property investment schemes, a title defect overlooked when acting for multiple buyers on a development, tax schemes, and repeated failure to include a particular head of claim on behalf of multiple claimants.

Why you should notify your insurer

A comprehensive notification of circumstances may give insurers some peace of mind, assist in changing insurers, and minimise the firm’s exposure to excesses. It may also be critical if the firm is merging with another practice.

Sometimes firms have notified circumstances already, but the notification may be open to challenge as being inadequate. Therefore, it is advisable to make a further notification, informed by a detailed understanding of how claims might be framed in the future.

The threshold for notification is low but there must be some causal, rather than coincidental, link between the notified circumstances and the later claim. It is critical to analyse the policy wording, the facts, and the possible bases of any future claims. Judgment is also required to strike a balance between being too wide and potentially ineffective, or too narrow, and failing to achieve its aim. Notification clauses will typically give a timeframe for this to be communicated to the insurer and notice must be given within the time set out in the insurance policy.

Insurers may try and reject the notification, though any determination should wait until the claim is made. If they continue to dispute the effect of a notification, it may be necessary to invoke the dispute resolution procedure under the policy, or there may be an arbitration between insurers under the SRA Participating Insurers Agreement. Dispute resolution cases can frequently run to tens of millions of pounds and may involve other coverage issues too, such as aggregation. Therefore, it is prudent to ensure you have reviewed your policy wording and act in accordance with its terms and conditions.

If you have questions or concerns about your Solicitors’ Professional indemnity renewal, please contact Frank Maher.