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The Solicitors Regulation Authority has launched an audit of professional indemnity insurers to check they have correctly declared the amount of premium income they received during the recent renewal.

After all the predictions of solicitors’ professional indemnity insurance (PII) premiums going through the roof, figures from the Solicitors Regulation Authority show a 15% fall across the profession for 2010/11, back to pre-recession levels. However, there has been a massive 57% jump in the number of firms in the assigned risks pool.

The escalating cost of professional indemnity insurance may mean the total premium pot for solicitors approaches £300m this year, the first time it will have exceeded the last contribution to the Solicitors Indemnity Fund, a leading broker has predicted. The news comes as a report on PII commissioned by the Solicitors Regulation Authority recommended a range of reforms to the scheme, including removing the minimum terms and conditions in relation to commercial clients, ending the single renewal date and no longer requiring insurers to cover firms that have not paid their premiums.

The anticipated deluge of law firms entering the assigned risks pool has not materialised, but the numbers are still large, Legal Futures can reveal. But they will fall over the next month as firms can backdate their insurance if they find it by the end of October.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is host a meeting between the Law Society, black and minority ethnic solicitors, and professional indemnity insurers in a bid to agree a plan of action to improve insurers’ equality practices. It was called in after the Law Society judged insurers’ response to examples of alleged discrimination in the 2009 renewal process to be “wholly inadequate”.