Firms avoid diving into risks pool

INDEMNITY: St Paul denies accusations that it discriminates against sole practitioners

Only 29 law firms have entered the assigned risks pool (ARP) and the signs are that the number will not increase dramatically, it emerged this week.

Meanwhile, the Gazette has obtained a full breakdown of the market shares of all the qualifying insurers, which shows that seven of the 35 insurers each have more than 5% of the market.

The market totalled 147,453,359 in premiums.

Michael Mathews, the former Law Society President who steered the move to open market indemnity insurance, said the early indications from practising certificate renewal is that few firms will have to go into the ARP, which is for those which have not or cannot find insurance.

He was addressing a session on indemnity at the S2K conference in London.

During the session, sole practitioners attacked St Paul International, the Society's joint venture partner, saying it had quoted high premiums because it did not want to cover solo firms.

St Paul managing director Paul Cusition said that of the 1,800 firms his company is covering, around half are solo firms.

Peter Farthing, the chairman- designate of the new Law Society insurance and indemnity committee, told the session that St Paul was not discriminating against sole practitioners - it had apparently made a commercial decision to quote high for all firms.

'It may be that St Paul is the only insurer making any profit out of this business,' Mr Farthing speculated.

The breakdown of market share figures show that St Paul has written 36.8 million of premiums, equivalent to a shade under 25% of the market.

QBE International with 20.5 million (13.9%) and Zurich Professional with 16.2 million (11%) are the other two main players.

Next come CGU (6.5%), Royal and SunAlliance (6.4%), AIG Europa (5.6%) and Saturn Professional Risks (5.4%).

Five of the qualified insurers have written no policies.Neil Rose