The regulator sets a floor. Your client contracts set the real number.
Architectural firms in British Columbia carry professional liability as a condition of holding a Certificate of Practice, and the regulator’s minimum is a floor rather than a target. Meeting the regulator and meeting the contract in front of you are two different tests. The two do different jobs. The regulator’s minimum is a condition of practice and the contract term is a promise to the client, so a firm has to satisfy both. In practice that means carrying the higher of the two, and reading the contract for anything else it asks for.
Build the practice file The short answerSet by the AIBC and tied to holding a Certificate of Practice
Written by the client, and it can sit well above the floor
Sits with the firm, and with the people who signed for it
How much professional liability must an architect carry in BC?
Sometimes more than the regulator asks, because a client contract can ask for more. The AIBC requirement is a floor for holding a Certificate of Practice. It was never designed to match what a public owner or a developer writes into a project agreement.
The AIBC sets that floor as a condition of holding a Certificate of Practice, and it attaches to the firm holding that certificate rather than to a member’s individual registration. The figure itself is the regulator’s to set, under Schedule M, its Board Rules for Professional Liability Insurance, and it gets reviewed. Take the current one from the AIBC’s own FAQ on how much coverage is required (opens in a new tab) directly rather than from a broker’s website. What matters more in practice is this: the floor was never written to match what a public owner, an institution or a developer puts in a project agreement.
A claim on design work does not have to succeed to hurt. Defence costs start on day one, and anything above the limit comes out of the practice.
The floor, and the number that actually binds.
The regulator’s floor
A condition of holding a Certificate of Practice. It is checked once a year, it applies to the firm, and it is the same figure whether you design a laneway house or a hospital.
The contract’s number
Written by whoever is hiring you, and scaled to the project rather than to you. Public owners, developers and institutions can ask for limits well above the regulator’s floor, and they ask for proof before you start.
Three things that decide whether cover answers.
It is claims made, not occurrence
Professional liability responds to the claim when it arrives, not to the year the drawing was stamped. A policy that lapsed is not sitting there waiting for a claim about old work.
The retroactive date decides the history
Work done before that date is usually outside the policy. Moving insurers without carrying the date forward can quietly erase years of past projects from cover. It is one line on the schedule and it is the line worth reading first.
Defence costs may sit inside the limit
On many wordings the legal bill is paid out of the same pot as the settlement. A limit that looked comfortable in the contract can be worn down before anyone reaches an outcome.
What design firms ask us about this.
Our contract asks for more than we carry. Can the limit be raised mid-project?
Usually yes, and it is a normal request. It is easier before the agreement is signed than after, because the insurer is then pricing a project you have not started rather than one already under way.
We are a two-person practice. Does the same requirement apply?
The Certificate of Practice requirement does not scale with staff numbers. Small practices sign the same contracts as large ones, and the client asking for a limit rarely adjusts it for firm size.
What happens to claims about work we finished years ago?
They come back to whatever policy is in force when the claim is made, provided the retroactive date reaches back far enough. This is why firms carry cover after they stop taking new work, and why the retroactive date matters more than the current year’s limit.
Does engineering work sit under the same requirement?
Engineering is regulated separately from architecture in BC, with its own registration and firm rules. The insurance question does not work the same way. The requirements Engineers and Geoscientists BC publishes for firm registration do not include professional liability insurance. Individual registrants do carry a mandatory secondary liability insurance through EGBC, but EGBC says that coverage is not for firms, corporations, public entities or employers, because those groups are expected to carry their own insurance as part of their business. Where no regulator sets a floor, the limit an engineering firm carries is the one its client contracts ask for. A firm should confirm its own position with EGBC, because the published registration requirements are not the whole of its bylaws.
We were declined once. Does that follow us?
We ask about it when we take the submission, and answering it plainly is far better than having it surface later. Declined files are placeable. Surprised insurers are the problem, not declined history.
Two that decide the same claim: the retroactive date, which decides which years are insured and why an umbrella almost never raises a professional limit.
Not the question you had? Build the practice file and set out your own situation in plain words. A licensed broker reads it and replies in writing.
Worth reading next: whether defence costs come out of your limit.
Send us the insurance clause from the contract.
We read what it actually requires, which is not always what people assume it requires, and tell you where your current policy sits against it. Next business day. A professional liability risk can take longer, because the insurer asks questions before it quotes.