Adding a $10M PI Excess Layer to Reach $20M

The engineering consultancy came to us with a 5x5 Professional Indemnity structure already in place: a $5 million primary policy with a $5 million excess layer above it, giving the firm $10 million total PI cover.

They had been with us for a few months when a larger engineering project created a new requirement. The existing $10M tower was no longer enough; the project needed $20M total cover.

The job was to protect what was already working underneath and go to market for a further $10 million excess layer above the existing 5x5, rather than recasting the whole programme from the ground up.

A higher PI limit does not have to come from a single insurer. Excess-layered cover lets each policy sit above the one below it and only respond once the lower layer is used up.

In this case, the first $10M was already structured as a 5x5: $5M primary plus $5M excess of $5M. We did not need to rebuild that base. We needed to find an additional $10 million excess layer sitting above the existing $10M tower.

We went to the markets that could support the upper layer and built the $20M structure on top of the cover the client already held. Because we work across a range of insurer securities and binders, the excess layers can sit with different markets to the primary. That is how a $20M tower can be built when no single insurer will write the whole figure on its own.

This was not a case of simply asking for a bigger number. An earlier option did not proceed because the terms on the table leaned too much risk back onto the client, including uncapped liability. A higher PI limit does not fix a contract that is commercially dangerous to sign, and part of the job here was reading the project exposure and being honest about when the liability terms, not the limit, were the real problem.

When the larger project did go ahead, the placement still had work behind it. The excess markets wanted an updated No Claims Declaration and a No Material Change declaration before they would firm up the higher layer, and the cover had to be checked against the project's exposure. The client also needed the cover to take effect quickly once the project was confirmed, so we pushed the underwriters - including the London market sitting behind the upper layer - for a prompt response.