At the end of last year, I participated in a panel session at the 2020 HOMES UK conference on the crisis in the professional indemnity (PI) insurance market.

The panel was chaired by Andy Tookey of construction consultants Baily Garner. There was general agreement that in time huge swathes of construction would either become uninsurable for PI or else would not have access to the PI market at “commercially reasonable” rates. I wrote in Building about this problem a year ago, and the picture has not improved.

Andy Tookey explained that this problem was not just associated with the Grenfell tragedy. Its roots go back over many years of poor underwriting discipline and poor claim performance. This all came to a head in 2008 with a review by Lloyd’s of London, as a result of which over 25% of the insurance capacity exited the market.

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