AXA to write professional indemnity from branches

AXA has revealed plans to dramatically step up the amount of professional indemnity insurance policies it writes.

AXA commercial lines and personal intermediary writes £7m of professional indemnity (PI) insurance per year from its London head office and is now rolling out a product for regional brokers and recruiting specialist underwriters for each of its 11 branches.

With branch-based underwriters and IT systems in place, underwriting managing director David Williams said AXA’s PI book would grow “fairly rapidly” to £25m.

Most of AXA’s PI book to date has come from schemes and specialist brokers.

The insurer now wants to sell its cover to clients who may already use AXA for other classes of insurance.

It has already recruited Mark Holliday and Louise Redmond from QBE to cover Birmingham, Bristol and Leeds.

AXA will write PI insurance for all professions apart from IFAs, for whom it backs an exclusive scheme with Aon, and solicitors.

“We’re taking a softly, softly approach and we’re not filling our boots with solicitors,” Williams told Insurance Times.

“We think there’s a good market out there. The brokers that support us on other classes have clients who want PI and therefore it’s an important product to be offering. It was a bit of a gap, really, and it’s good that we’ve filled that gap.”