Professional Services Insurance for California Firms.

Claims-made policies respond to claims filed during the policy period, regardless of when the underlying act occurred — but only back to the retroactive date. If your new policy has a retro date of today, claims for work done last year aren't covered, even if the lawsuit is filed today. When switching carriers, we negotiate full prior-acts coverage. If you let E&O lapse, you lose all prior-acts protection going forward.

First-party (your costs after an incident): forensic investigation, system restoration, business interruption, ransom payment, customer notification. Third-party (claims against you): from clients whose data was compromised. Most cyber policies include both but with different sublimits. We carefully review sublimits — many cheap cyber policies have very low limits on the things that actually cost money (forensics, ransom, regulatory response).

Usually yes. E&O 'data privacy' provisions are typically limited — covering only your professional negligence around data, not the full cyber incident. Standalone cyber covers ransomware, system attacks, business interruption from cyber events, customer notification, regulatory response. We compare what your E&O includes against what standalone cyber adds — usually there are meaningful gaps.

Claim severity. Legal malpractice and accounting malpractice claims can be very large because the clients involved are sophisticated businesses with significant financial stakes. A misfiled deadline or missed tax election can result in seven-figure exposure. California courts also tend toward higher verdicts in professional malpractice. We typically recommend higher limits for law and accounting practices.

Coverage for losses from fraudulent wire instructions, often arising from email compromise (yours or a client's). Many small businesses lose tens or hundreds of thousands to wire fraud schemes. Standard cyber doesn't always include social engineering — we verify it's included with meaningful sublimits, especially for firms handling client funds or facilitating client payments.

EPLI covers employment-related claims — wrongful termination, harassment, wage-and-hour, retaliation. Professional services firms have professional workforces but California employment exposure is the same as any other industry — PAGA actions are filed against law firms and accounting practices regularly. EPLI is small premium and significant protection.

Yes — tech E&O is a specialty market with its own underwriting. A software bug that causes a client's downtime, a consulting recommendation that doesn't deliver expected results, a security incident in deployed software — all tech E&O claims. We work with carriers experienced in technology E&O rather than generic professional liability markets.

California professional licensing boards (Bar, CBA, DRE, CFP Board, etc.) can investigate practitioners, and the investigation alone can cost five figures in legal defense. Many E&O policies include 'license defense' or 'regulatory defense' sublimits. We verify this coverage is present and adequate — too many small E&O policies skimp on regulatory defense.