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Is there scope for our passing the PII premium on to our clients in some way? For example, if my premiums are, say, £30,000 and I bill £300,000 p a, for every bill I send out 10% thereof is added on as PII premium. The amount would be worked out on last year's premiums and bills. E g each conveyancing bill of £500 would have £50 added as a disbursement. Any surplus could go into an "PI insurance Premium Office Account" to cover any shortfall in future years, e g for unpaid bills, waived bills, etc.. It is the clients who seem to want this cover so why shouldn't they pay for it?

And whilst vaguely on the subject, are not a lot of our troubles due to undercutting by sweatshops? If that is so could we consider a return to scale fees? In France notaries charge 0.9% per sale/purchase and 1.00% of the value of a mortgage for mortgagee work. And they HAVE to charge that. And they HAVE to get their fee paid IN ADVANCE, otherwise they are deemed to be lending to their clients. So on an average transaction of 300,000 Euros with a 200,000 Euro loan they are paid 2,700 for the purchase and 2,000 for the loan. If we could charge that, or anything like it, we could give a transaction proper consideration and all the time it needed. And the result of that would almost certainly be fewer claims leading to smaller PII premiums.

Sometimes I think we are just our own worst enemies.