Solicitors Indemnity Fund: far from a done deal?

I refer to a recent NLJ news article, ‘New claims risks for shuttered firms’, which treats the closure of the Solicitors Indemnity Fund (SIF) as a fait accompli. The question is: why should it be a fait accompli, or more fundamentally, why should it close at all?

Crunching the numbers

Let us look at some facts taken from SIF’s annual report and accounts for the year ended 31 October 2020.

In the introductory narrative, there is the heading ’Purpose and principal activities of the fund’. One of the stated purposes is:

‘Manage new claims and settle the associated liabilities arising from firms insured in the open market and which have ceased without successor from 1 September 2000 and where the requisite six-year run-off period provided by their last market insurer or the Assigned Risks Pool has elapsed (“post six-year run off claims”)’

This