What in the blue blazes is the retroactive date?

Switching insurer doesn't have to cost you a thing in cover. Letting it lapse, even briefly, can leave all your past work exposed.

You renewed. You saved a bit of money and you’ve probably even improved your coverage. But hold that thought, champ.

Professional indemnity is a funny old thing

Most insurance covers things that happen while you're covered. Professional indemnity doesn't quite work like that. It’s protection for claims made against you while your policy is live, and covers the work you’ve done in the past.

So knowing you're covered today isn't the whole picture. You also need to know how far back that cover reaches. And that's decided by a date most people don’t quite understand, tucked away in your schedule. The retroactive date.

Anything you did before it isn't covered, no matter how robust the rest of your policy looks. A bit like a pre-existing condition on health cover. It started before your cover did, so nobody's picking it up.

The good news

Your retroactive date is the day you first took out continuous cover. And here's the part that surprises people: you keep it even if you switch insurer. Once, twice, eight times, it doesn't matter. As long as your cover has run without a break, your retroactive date stays put and your full history stays protected.

"Continuous" being the operative word.

The sting

Let your policy lapse, even for a weekend, even for a day, and that retroactive date can reset to day one of your new policy. Everything before it falls outside your cover.

The really unpleasant bit is the timing. You won't notice on the day. You'll find out months later, when a client raises a complaint about an old project and someone points at a date you've never looked at. Whoops.

Why we're a bit obsessive about this

Here's where we get a bit earnest (really honest, even). Because this one genuinely matters to us.

A lapse is very rarely a conscious decision. Nobody sits down and chooses to let their cover expire. It happens in the cracks between running a business and living life.

A renewal email lands in a busy week and just like that, years of protection on your past work are gone.

We think that's a rubbish way to lose something so important. So we fight to make sure it can't. We give an ungodly amount of notice before anything is due. We set policies up to renew continuously so there's no window for a gap to open. And we keep an eye on the retroactive date every single time, because moving insurer should never cost you the cover you've already built up.

It's not glamorous work. It's the sort of thing that happens in the background and you never have to think about. Which is exactly the point.

The REALLY HONEST takeaway

The retroactive date isn't a trick. It's a normal part of how claims-made cover works. The problem is that many customers don’t understand how continuous cover impacts it. And they find out it reset at the worst possible moment.

Keep your cover continuous and your retroactive date comes with you. If you're not sure yours is being looked after, that's exactly what a proper market review is for.