Insurance Insight for Where You Are Now
Insurance feels like a cost you can defer until someone forces the issue.
That’s rational.
When you’re allocating capital between engineers or product teams who build features and insurance feels like it sits idle, those product benefits win every time.
Until they don’t.
Simplify Stream moves with you through the moments when insurance stops being optional: fundraising rounds when investors ask about D&O coverage, contract negotiations when customers demand indemnity limits, product launches when regulatory requirements hit, and M&A when buyers scrutinise your policies.
Insurance is often approached in three ways:
Option one: Buy the minimum required to satisfy whoever’s asking this week. Optimise for cost. Assume nothing will go wrong. This works until something goes wrong, which it will, because you’re operating a business at scale with employees, customers, data, products, contracts and regulatory obligations that create liability whether you acknowledge it or not.
Option two: Delegate it entirely to brokers and assume they’ll handle it. This works if your broker understands high-growth company risks and is incentivised to optimise for your interests rather than their commission. Most don’t, because the incentive structure rewards selling standard products quickly, not explaining why standard products leave gaps in your specific situation.
Option three: Understand how insurance actually works before you need it. Know what underwriters scrutinise. Know what claims handlers look for so you don’t inadvertently void coverage. Know which policy terms matter and which are negotiable. Know what “adequate protection” actually means for a company at your stage.
Simplify Stream exists because this information is hard to come by. Written from the underwriting and broking side, with no products to sell and no commissions to earn. Clear explanations of how insurance actually works, what underwriters scrutinise, what claims managers look for, and what practical steps preserve coverage when things go wrong.
Why This Matters
High growth businesses don’t decide when insurance becomes mandatory. Investors, customers, and buyers do.
Series A investors ask questions about D&O coverage you can’t answer. Enterprise procurement requires £1 million cyber liability and you have £1 million but its a Professional Indemnity. M&A buyers discover your clinical trial insurance doesn’t cover the regulatory violations that concern them most in a foreign jurisdiction.
You either understand insurance before these moments arrive, or you discover gaps when deals are in motion and timelines won’t wait.
Getting it right means deals close without surprises. Getting it wrong means valuation adjustments, extended due diligence, and claims denied on technicalities you didn’t know existed.
How Policy Terms Change
Underwriters at insurance companies know a lot about your business, they know even more about your type of business based on the claims they pay.
Insurers and brokers want to structure coverage around your company’s specific needs. They’re not being difficult when they include certain terms, they’re responding to catastrophic events that taught the industry expensive lessons about what’s actually insurable and at what cost.
You’ve probably encountered these:
- Aggregation clauses that seem designed to reduce payout.
- Terrorism exclusions in policies seemingly unrelated to terrorism.
- Supply chain cover that doesn’t respond when your supplier fails.
- Clinical trial policies with participant limits that make no obvious sense.
These terms aren’t arbitrary. They exist because specific events, some famous, others less well known, fundamentally changed how risk is priced and transferred. Understanding why they exist is how you negotiate them effectively.
The goal here isn’t to explain market cycles or reinsurance costs. It’s to demystify the policy language you’ll encounter so you can negotiate coverage that supports your business rather than accepting standard terms that leave gaps in your specific situation.
The events below are just some of outcomes that have shaped how insurance is offered.
September 11, 2001 changed how insurers count exposures. A single terrorist act created thousands of simultaneous claims that insurers initially thought were separate events. The industry lost $40 billion and fundamentally restructured how aggregation works. That aggregation clause in your policy exists because of this. It’s not going away. But you can negotiate its application to your specific risk profile if you understand what underwriters are actually protecting against. 9/11 changed how terrorism and aggregation are treated and prompted new treaty reinsurance structures; the event reframed how underwriters count and aggregate exposures.
TGN1412 / Northwick Park (2006) was a Phase I clinical trial where six healthy volunteers simultaneously experienced catastrophic organ failure from a single dose. Insurers thought they were covering six individual participant injuries. They were actually covering a single systemic trial design failure affecting all participants. Clinical trial insurance changed overnight. The multi-participant limits and protocol review requirements in your policy exist because of this event. They’re not negotiable. But understanding them helps you structure trials in ways insurers can actually price. TGN1412 / Northwick Park exposed gaps in first‑in‑human trial oversight and led to formal expert review and regulatory recommendations that reshaped clinical‑trial practice and insurer underwriting for life‑sciences risks.
2008 financial crisis demonstrated that counterparty risk isn’t theoretical. When insurers and reinsurers become insolvent, policies become worthless. The capital requirements, reinsurance structures and financial strength ratings you’re asked about during placement exist because of this. Insurers aren’t being bureaucratic. They’re ensuring they can actually pay claims when you need them. 2008 financial crisis and regulatory reform sharpened focus on capital, counterparty risk and systemic resilience across insurers and reinsurers.
Tohoku earthquake and tsunami (2011) revealed that supply chains don’t fail linearly. A single component supplier in Japan failing can stop production for manufacturers globally. The supply chain business interruption coverage you think you have probably doesn’t respond the way you expect. Not because insurers are being difficult, but because supply chain failures are harder to insure than direct property damage. Understanding this distinction changes how you structure coverage. The Christchurch earthquake and Tohoku 2011 reinforced the need for improved catastrophe modelling and supply‑chain BI planning.
What You’ll Find Here
Sector specific guides for clinical trials, SaaS, MedTech, manufacturing and regulated services. Specific guidance for the risks you actually face, not generic advice.
Practical checklists (lots of them) for fundraising, product launches, M&A, incidents, and regulatory submissions. What matters when timelines are compressed and mistakes are expensive.
Policy mechanics explained. What’s covered, what’s excluded, what underwriters check, what claims handlers scrutinise. The information brokers should provide but often don’t.
Industry connections to the trade associations, government initiatives and professional bodies that matter for high-growth companies, with context for why they’re relevant to your situation.
Why This Business Insurance Guide Exists
For nearly a decade I underwrote, placed, or developed specialist business insurance for high growth technology and life sciences companies. This taught me what information founders, risk managers, and advisers need when commercial insurance decisions can’t be deferred or no longer provide adequate promises.
From coverage for M&A transactions, product liability exposures, cyber risks, clinical trials, and infrastructure projects, standard business insurance policies can work. Until they don’t. Negotiated policy endorsements, specialist products or extensions should be carefully considered by insurers, and advised on coverage that supports business growth rather than simply satisfying compliance requirements.
Of curse, insurers have other operational, regulatory and commercial considerations not typically shared to as part of broker and insured transactions and relationships. These must be assessed as part of underwriting strategy and capital allocation decisions.
This business insurance knowledge base exists because the information should be accessible before deals are in motion and mistakes become expensive.
Best to you and your business.
Jiveen MacGillivray, Editor
