REFORM REQUIRED TO ENSURE COMMERCIAL VIABILITY
There are current risk and pricing concerns in the
surveyors' professional indemnity market following the
financial crisis in 2007/8, which had an especially pronounced
effect on the property market and may have a long-term structural
impact on professional indemnity insurance. As a consequence, the
Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) published a
consultation report last December on the state of the PI market for
surveyors who undertake valuations.
The consultation paper identified that the valuation business
could not subsist as a viable commercial service with increasing PI
premiums and increasingly onerous conditions and levels of
liability in client contracts. This results in valuer insolvencies
and reduced public protection due to the service being uninsurable
and therefore unavailable.
