The plan, 1 of 3

Professional indemnity insurance: one insurer, no choice

A sole practitioner in NSW commits close to ten times the share of turnover to compulsory insurance that a firm of 25 partners does. That is on the figures of the Government's own expert. The same expert found that NSW solicitors pay more per head than Victorian solicitors, and the Attorney General has confirmed it in writing. Every solicitor who practises only in this state buys that cover from one insurer, and the Law Society owns it.

The numbers

These figures come from the Deloitte report the Department of Communities and Justice commissioned in October 2024, from the Parliamentary record, and from the Attorney General's own correspondence. Where a figure is ours, it says so.

• Ten to one. Deloitte found that sole practitioners pay premiums equivalent to approximately 2.90 per cent of gross fee income, while practices of 25 or more partners pay approximately 0.30 per cent. The ratio of close to ten to one is our arithmetic on those two figures.
• Up to 6.9 per cent. Members of the Solicitors for PII Choice committee report premiums of between 2.7 and 6.9 per cent of their gross fee income. Those are our members' own figures, not an audited series.
• More than Victoria. Deloitte found that "premiums per solicitor are currently higher than in Victoria but broadly similar to Queensland". It put part of the gap down to higher claims per solicitor in NSW, and part to "the greater administrative efficiency of LPLC", the Victorian insurer. On 20 August 2026 the Attorney General wrote that "The Deloitte Report found that PII premiums per solicitor were higher in NSW than in Victoria in 2023–24". Neither document puts a percentage on the gap, so this page does not either.
• 35 per cent. Deloitte's analysis "indicates that an average competitive PII provider may operate at a level that is 35% more efficient than Lawcover". Deloitte also observed that "more often than not, more competition is good".
• Seventy per cent, and twenty. Around 70 per cent of NSW solicitors have no interstate presence. Deloitte records that interstate practices, "accounting for around 20% of the market", are exempt from buying their cover from Lawcover because they practise in more than one state.

A fifth of the solicitors practising in NSW already buy their compulsory cover in a competitive market, because they practise interstate. The other four-fifths cannot.

How we got here

Lawcover Insurance Pty Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Law Society of NSW. The Society is at the same time the representative body for the solicitors who must buy Lawcover's product and a regulatory authority under the Legal Profession Uniform Law. The Chair of the Select Committee said in debate that the overlap "is not, by itself, any evidence of wrongdoing", but that "it is exactly the kind of overlapping function a competition-literate regulator would normally be expected to keep separate". Barristers are treated differently. For 2026-27 the Attorney General approved, under the same section 95, professional indemnity policies from four providers, and the NSW Bar Association publishes a table comparing them.

• 1999. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recommended choice of insurer within minimum standards. This state's own review reached the same view in the same year. Deloitte, in 2024, described approval of a new policy as consistent with both.
• 2001. The actuarial advice to the Attorney General's Department that favoured a single provider said: "There needs to be an effective mechanism in place to prevent excessive profits being earned by the monopoly insurer in the medium to long term. A periodic competitive tender process should achieve this." The document relied on for a single provider contemplated a contestable one.
• 2024. ABC Insurance Pty Ltd applied for approval of a second policy. The Law Society challenged the Attorney General's power to grant it. On 23 April 2024 the Court of Appeal held that section 95 is a "legislative arrangement for the approval or selection of insurers" and confers power to approve a policy "including the identity of the insurer by which the policy is to be issued". The High Court refused special leave on 5 December 2024. The power exists, and no legislation is needed to use it.
• 2025 and 2026. The application was refused for 2025-26 by a determination of 10 July 2025, and for 2026-27 by a decision the Department published on 9 March 2026. The Department assessed the applicant's policy against the nine minimum standards in rule 78 and marked it compliant on eight. The single adverse finding concerned cover for former employees under rule 78(5). Deloitte assessed the amended wording and marked the same clause compliant. The Department's own index lists a brief on the amended wording dated 22 May 2024. It was not produced.
• 2026. On 25 March the Legislative Council ordered production of the Department's papers. On 5 August it established a Select Committee, chaired by Taylor Martin MLC, to inquire into the potential for competition reforms. On 14 September Solicitors for PII Choice lodged its submission, published as Submission No 42.

What our submission asks

The submission makes seven recommendations. In summary:

1. Approve at least one more insurer for 2027-28.

   On the same rule 78 minimum terms. That is the first practising year a recommendation of the Committee can realistically affect, because the decisions in evidence were made between February and July of the year before.

2. Use the safeguards Deloitte already designed.

   A policy-variation lock, a premium cap, an assigned risk pool or subsidy for higher-risk practices, a risk-management levy, mandatory data reporting and a defined lead time. The Department's own expert prepared that package for the express purpose of managing the risks of new entry. It should not be set so high that it locks a second insurer out.

3. Publish the criteria, publish the reasons, decide in time.

   Approval criteria known before each application cycle. Written reasons that address each criterion and record whether approval on conditions was considered. A timetable that lets practitioners and insurers act on the decision within the practising year it concerns.

4. An independent panel.

   The Attorney General decides on the recommendation of a panel constituted independently of the Department and of any approved insurer.

5. Settle the section 95 question in a sentence.

   Amend section 95 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 to resolve its relationship with section 210 of the Uniform Law, and to say whether preserving the existing market structure is something the decision-maker may take into account. A private opinion of Bret Walker SC and Dr Sean Baron Levi says it is not. The Department has taken the opposite view.

6. Publish the Deloitte report in full.

   Chapter 2, the assessment of the applicant, and Appendix A, the assessment of its policy against rule 78, were redacted at the applicant's request. The profession was told a competitor had been assessed and found wanting without being able to read the assessment. The unredacted text is now before the Parliament without any claim of privilege.

7. Obtain the withheld advice.

   Including the advice of Justin Gleeson SC of 22 March 2024 and the correspondence brief of 22 May 2024 that the Department's index lists but the production does not contain.

Three steps for Council

Approving a second insurer is the Attorney General's decision under section 95, not Council's. What the Society says about it, and what it publishes, is Council's. These three steps are within that power.

1. Say where the Society stands.

   Council resolves to support approval of at least one further insurer on the same rule 78 terms, with Deloitte's safeguards, and tells the Committee and the Attorney General so. The Society's own submission to the inquiry says that "the particular characteristics of legal practice are best supported by a sole provider model of insurance". Council decides the Society's position, and members who pay the premiums are entitled to know how each councillor voted.

2. Publish the comparison.

   The Bar Association publishes a table comparing the four approved barristers' policies. The Society should do the same for solicitors the day a second policy is approved: cover, exclusions, excess, run-off and claims handling, side by side. Until then, publish Lawcover's premium schedule against the Victorian insurer's at each band of fee income, so that the argument about whether NSW pays more can be settled by members reading the numbers rather than by press release.

3. Separate the roles.

   Council commissions and publishes a review of how the Society's functions as a regulatory authority are kept apart from its position as Lawcover's sole shareholder: who sits where, what information passes between them, and how the Society decides its response when a competitor applies for approval. The Committee Chair's words are the right test. The overlap is not evidence of wrongdoing. It is the kind of overlap a competition-literate regulator would be expected to keep separate, and the profession should be able to see how that is done.

We make no criticism of Lawcover

Lawcover has insured this profession for a quarter of a century, and Deloitte found that under it "there has been a high level of market and price stability along with market coverage and accessibility". Its own submission to the inquiry says that it "acts as a mutual, not a monopoly", that it has returned $89 million in surpluses to policyholders over twelve years, and that more than 80 per cent of its premium income funds claims against an industry average of around 65 per cent. On Victoria, Lawcover says the per-solicitor comparison is the wrong measure, that both insurers price on gross fee income, and that at comparable levels of fee income "premiums for LPLC insureds and Lawcover insureds are comparable and, in many cases, Lawcover's premiums are lower than those in Victoria". Members should read both cases. Our point does not depend on winning that argument. A price that is never tested against another offer cannot be shown to be fair, however well the insurer behaves, and the question of who decides whether it is ever tested sits with a body that owns the insurer. Our point is about choice and about who decides.

Where the inquiry stands

The Committee has published 43 submissions. On our reading, 20 support competition, 18 oppose it and five are mixed or neutral. Every institutional body that made a submission opposes change: the Law Society of NSW, the Law Council of Australia, the Law Society of the Northern Territory and Lawcover. Four of the twenty supporting submissions come from insurers or brokers seeking to enter the market. Individual practitioners and private individuals, the largest group, split nine for, ten against and four mixed. That classification is ours, made from reading each submission, and anyone can check it against the Committee's published list. Solicitors for PII Choice has asked to give evidence at a public hearing.

Read the submission

The submission was lodged by Solicitors for PII Choice - NSW on 14 September 2026 and is published by the Committee as Submission No 42. I drafted it. It is signed by six practising solicitors: Clare Peacock, Peter Driessen, Anne Taylor, Nina Rossi, Angelique Nesbitt and me. We are not an insurer, and we are not retained, funded or instructed by an insurer. We do not ask the Committee to prefer ABC Insurance or any other applicant. It relies only on documents produced to the Legislative Council without claim of privilege, the Parliamentary record and Government-published material.

Sources

• Deloitte, Expert Report concerning Solicitors' Professional Indemnity Insurance in NSW (October 2024), pages 4, 8, 21, 22 (figure 3.3, Law Society data for 2023), 30, 31, 43 and 61, and appendix A, as produced to the Legislative Council under its order of 25 March 2026 without claim of privilege.
• Letter from the Attorney General to Judy Hannan MP, 20 August 2026 (ref EAP26/10333).
• New South Wales, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Council, 25 March 2026 (John Ruddick) and 5 August 2026 (Taylor Martin, Susan Carter); Minutes of Proceedings, 5 August 2026, item 39.
• Law Society of New South Wales v Attorney General (NSW); ABC Insurance Pty Ltd v Law Society of New South Wales [2024] NSWCA 90; ABC Insurance Pty Ltd v Law Society of New South Wales [2024] HCASL 331 and 332.
• Taylor Fry, Actuarial and Related Advice in relation to the provision of Professional Indemnity Insurance to Solicitors in NSW (June 2001), page 19, as produced to the Legislative Council without claim of privilege.
• Department of Communities and Justice, Assessment of ABC Policy's Compliance with r 78 Minimum Standards, and decision statement of 9 March 2026; index to the production under Standing Order 52, item (c)(i)26.
• NSW Bar Association, Professional Indemnity Insurance (web page), 2026-27 comparison of policies offered by Aon, Marsh, Suncorp and Pacific Indemnity.
• The Law Society of New South Wales, Submission No 46 to the Select Committee, page 3.
• Lawcover Insurance Pty Ltd, Submission No 47 to the Select Committee, paragraphs 4.3 to 4.7, 6.5 and 7, with footnote 3.
• The 43 submissions published by the Select Committee into the Potential for Competition Reforms Regarding Solicitors' Professional Indemnity Insurance, as at 19 September 2026.
• Solicitors for PII Choice - NSW, Submission No 42, 14 September 2026.