Business Insurance After Insolvency — We Place What Automated Schemes Decline

Yes. Insolvency is not a bar to insurance in the UK — it is a rating factor, and a manageable one. What it is incompatible with is automated underwriting, which is what every comparison site and most online quote journeys run on. Those systems apply a rule rather than a judgement, so the answer comes back the same however many you try. Placed manually through specialist and Lloyd's markets, cover is available after a creditors' voluntary liquidation, a compulsory liquidation, an administration or a CVA, and for new companies formed by directors of a failed business. Expect a loading of roughly 25–60% for a recent event, recovering over two to three clean renewals, and expect to pay annually rather than monthly. What you should not expect is a refusal, provided the history is disclosed and presented properly.

Because the search is not only on the company. Automated underwriting runs director-level checks against Companies House alongside the company credit check, so a brand-new entity with no debt, no trading history and a clean file will still be refused if a director appears on a previous liquidation. This is why re-applying never works and why the answer is identical across every site — they are all querying the same record and applying the same rule. It is not a judgement about your business; nobody has looked at your business. The fix is a manual submission to an underwriter who will read a written explanation of what failed, why, and what is structured differently this time. That single document is usually what turns a decline into a quotation.

Yes, and it is not optional. The Insurance Act 2015 imposes a duty of fair presentation, requiring you to disclose every material circumstance — and insolvency history, whether the company's or a director's, is unambiguously material. Insurers will find it regardless, because Companies House is public and director searches are routine. The practical difference is enormous: disclosed history gets priced into the premium, while undisclosed history gives the insurer grounds to avoid the policy at claim stage, refund the premium and leave you uninsured for the loss. A deliberate or reckless non-disclosure allows avoidance outright; even an innocent one permits a proportionate reduction in what is paid. Disclose everything, in writing, at the outset.

Professional Indemnity and Directors & Officers are claims-made policies: they respond to claims made while the policy is in force, not to work done while it was in force. So when a company stops trading and the policy lapses, any claim arriving afterwards — about advice given or decisions taken years earlier — has no policy to attach to, and the directors are personally exposed. Run-off cover keeps that protection alive after trading ceases, typically for six years, longer for construction and design work. The critical point is timing: it must be arranged at or before the point of insolvency. Once the company is dissolved and the policy has lapsed, buying it retrospectively is difficult and frequently impossible. If you are heading towards a formal procedure, this is the first call to make, not the last.

Often not, and this catches people out more than the premium itself. Monthly instalments are a credit agreement, and the finance provider runs its own scoring separately from the insurer's underwriting — so it is entirely possible to be offered good terms and then refused the facility to pay for them in instalments. Businesses with a recent insolvency, or a director carrying one, are commonly declined credit even where cover is readily available. There are workarounds: specialist premium finance houses that price adverse credit rather than refusing it, larger deposits with a shorter instalment term, or staggering inception dates across different policies so the cash-flow impact spreads through the year. The important thing is to plan for it at the quotation stage rather than discover it on the day cover is meant to start.

Yes, in the ordinary case. Directors of an insolvent company may generally form a new one and continue trading, and it happens constantly — it is how a viable trade survives the failure of the vehicle carrying it. There are real legal limits: section 216 of the Insolvency Act 1986 restricts reuse of a prohibited name similar to the liquidated company's, with criminal and personal liability consequences, and a director subject to a disqualification order or undertaking cannot act at all. Those are matters for your insolvency practitioner or solicitor rather than your broker. From an insurance standpoint the position is simply that the profile is legitimate but automatically declined by scheme underwriting, so it needs manual placement. We treat it as ordinary business.

The standard question is five or six years, and the weight attached to an event falls sharply as it ages. Within the first twelve months expect the largest loading and the narrowest market. Between one and three years the position eases considerably, particularly with clean trading and a clean claims record behind you. Beyond six years, most underwriters treat it as historic and it frequently makes no difference at all to the premium — though it may still trigger an automated decline, which is a distribution problem rather than a pricing one. The practical advice is to re-market annually rather than accepting a rolling renewal: the loading should be coming down each year, and the insurer who wrote you at the worst point is rarely the cheapest once the event has aged.

Act immediately, because trading uninsured is both a legal problem and a commercial one — Employers' Liability is compulsory and most contracts and leases require cover. Insurers frequently serve notice once an appointment is filed, and notice periods can be short. The route through is a manual placement with the administrator's interest properly noted and the contracting party clearly identified, which is a specific technical point that generic brokers get wrong. Where the business is being marketed for sale, continuity of cover directly affects saleability, so it is worth treating as urgent rather than administrative. We also prepare the buyer's day-one programme in parallel where a sale is in prospect, so cover transfers cleanly on completion instead of scrambling afterwards.

No, and it is usually the most insurable position on this page. A company voluntary arrangement means the business is still trading, still generating income and repaying creditors under a supervised plan — which underwriters read as evidence of control rather than failure. Terms are generally reasonable, and improve materially once the arrangement completes, so always re-market at that point rather than letting the loaded premium roll forward. What helps most is presenting the supervisor's report and the payment record alongside the submission, because it converts an abstract adverse marker into a demonstrable track record of meeting obligations. The obstacle remains automated systems, which read "CVA" and stop. Our CVA insurance guide covers the detail.

They matter far longer than the company does, and losing them causes real problems. Occupational disease claims — asbestos, silica, noise-induced hearing loss, hand-arm vibration — surface decades after the exposure, and the claimant must identify the employer's insurer at the time. If a company is liquidated and its records are dispersed, former employees can be left unable to trace cover, and directors can find themselves drawn into claims that should have attached to a policy. Keep certificates and policy numbers for every year of trading, and make sure historic policies are registered with the Employers' Liability Tracing Office where possible. It costs nothing at the time and it is unrecoverable later. This is one of the most commonly overlooked items in an orderly wind-down.

No. Every comparison site and online scheme queries the same public records and applies broadly the same automated rules, so a fourth attempt returns the fourth identical answer. Worse, repeated applications can leave a trail of quotation searches that does you no favours. The route that works is a manual submission to underwriters with appetite for adverse risk, supported by a written explanation of the history — what happened, why, what changed — and a clean presentation of the current business. That is a different distribution channel, not a different price. If you have been refused, you are exactly the profile this page exists for: see also insurance for businesses refused cover and refused elsewhere.

Less than you would expect, and honesty matters more than paperwork. We need to know what the business does now and what you project turning over; which insolvency procedure applied, when, and to which entity; who the directors are and whether any of them carry history of their own; whether a disqualification order or undertaking is in force; five years of claims experience if you have it, including from a previous entity; and what cover you currently hold or have been refused. If a claims-made policy is still running, tell us before it lapses. From there we build the written presentation, decide which markets to approach and in what order, and come back to you with terms rather than a decline. Send it through the quote form or call 01792 001350.