M&A insurance

Important benefits of M&A insurance

• Risks with an unknown quantum or unknown likelihood or timing of transpiring are ringfenced, allowing the parties to focus on their underlying transaction
• Residual liability is reduced to as little as £1 meaning IRR is not adversely affected
• Covered risks can be removed from negotiations, avoiding price chips, provisions or costly escrows
• The negotiation of warranties is often mollified and shortened

Our products

W&I insurance

An insurer sits behind the seller and/or management’s warranties allowing them to cap liability to a single pound under the transaction sale agreement. Cover is provided for unknown risks, discovered after closing and causing a breach of warranty, which haven’t been disclosed by the seller or assessed by the buyer in their own due diligence process.

Specific Risk insurance

Covering a broad spectrum of specific legal, commercial, operational or other risks.  We insure known and unknown risks associated with an organisation’s historic or future trading activities, fundraising or liquidation.  The range of risks which can be insured is broad, the insurance cover commonly allows an organisation to complete a transaction, attract different investors, return assets to shareholder/creditors more easily or obtain advantageous funding terms. Frequently these policies are placed without the context of a transaction.

Tax insurance

Identified tax risks can often be covered by specific tax risk insurance policies, removing the need for a seller indemnity, unblocking negotiations or facilitating restructuring.

Underwriting process

Advisors, sponsors, corporates and management require concise and timely processes and we appreciate insurance cannot detract from the underlying transaction.

Our underwriting is efficient, focussing on the fundamental details and respecting deadlines.  

For each of our M&A insurance products, we have dedicated underwriters with technical knowledge and experience and having a multi-jurisdictional and multi-discipline background.

For W&I, underwriting questions are limited and (whilst sometimes useful) costly underwriting calls are not mandatory for us to provide a market leading cover position.

For Specific Risk and Tax insurance, the risk being insured often dictates the underwriting process that is needed to transfer the liability to insurance and allow us to deliver a bespoke solution for the client.