It was not many years ago when, despite it being a regulatory requirement for a financial adviser to have PI insurance, it became virtually impossible for anyone to obtain cover at a reasonable premium.
Indeed, for all intents and purposes, the PI market shut down for the intermediary sector. Such was the crisis that the then regulator, the FSA, turned a blind eye to the fact that over a thousand firms were trading without PI insurance.
Clearly, this is not a situation we want to see again, yet all the signs show we are charging headlong into exactly that, unless we can bring some pragmatism into the market.