San Rafael Professional Liability InsuranceB2B Commercial E&O Brokers

A new firm entity starts a new claims-made policy, and the default retroactive date is the new policy's inception date, so work handled at the old San Rafael (Marin County) firm can fall outside coverage unless prior acts are requested. Carriers will consider a retroactive date reaching back to the attorney's original bar admission date where the application discloses the prior firm and the work performed there. Mergers and dissolutions add a second problem: the entity that carried the coverage may no longer exist, so any tail or extended reporting endorsement has to be confirmed in writing before the old policy ends.

Often yes, but the lapse does not disappear. Work performed during an uninsured gap is generally uninsurable afterward, because a later policy cannot pick up exposure from a period it never covered or priced. What a carrier can do is bridge the retroactive date back to the original policy inception where the prior coverage history is verifiable and the gap is disclosed on the application. A San Rafael firm that discloses the lapse up front is treated very differently from one where the carrier discovers it at claim time, so the documentation matters as much as the market.

The retroactive date is the earliest date the policy will respond to work performed, and prior acts coverage is the benefit that date buys. Repairing it means moving that date earlier than the new policy's inception, usually back to a prior policy's inception or to the start of practice. That placement usually sits with specialty A-rated surplus lines markets rather than admitted carriers, because admitted forms rarely allow a retroactive date earlier than their filed rules permit. The date has to appear on the declarations page with prior acts wording that carries no cutoff exclusion before you bind.

The audit reviews every prior declarations page with its retroactive date, the dates each firm entity existed, any tail or extended reporting endorsement purchased, and the reason for the lapse or entity change, plus a general description of practice areas. Missing policies should be disclosed rather than omitted. PRIA Brokers maps the timeline, tells you which markets will consider the date you need, and confirms the terms in writing before you pay. The audit is free and there is no obligation, and any premium figure for a repaired period is indicative and subject to underwriting.