Aspen Insurance has stopped writing UK solicitors' professional indemnity (PI) insurance primary policy layers and renewals, but will write excess layers.

An Aspen spokesman said: "The reasons for this are past claims experience, anticipated rates and mandated terms and conditions."

Aspen wrote £1.15m of solicitors' PI business last year, with 0.5% of the market share. The insurer entered the solicitors' PI market in 2008, when it wrote £2.26m of business with a 1% market share.

Last month Chartis also scaled back its solicitors' PI business to concentrate on renewals.