Indemnity - like Christmas - comes just once a year, which is a relief in many ways. And like Christmas we face it with good intentions to plan ahead and get everything ready on time.

However well prepared we mean to be, somehow time catches up on us and we have a rush at the last minute.

Like the festival season: we spend a lot of money and sometimes feel it was not quite the event we hoped for.

At this time of year we get inundated with proposal forms, emails and advertisements for our business.

What would be useful is some equivalent of Go Compare so you just fill in one form and the search engine finds us the right and hopefully a good deal.

What we get is loads of different forms, each with slightly different questions.

We get brokers calling us and saying 'choose us. Whatever you do don’t use an insurer direct'.

The reality is some brokers are tied to one insurer. Some insurers will only take business through a broker. It is easy to forget which brokers are chasing what quotes.

Rather than fill in the same information each time I complete a proposal form, I prepare an attachment with the standard details and scrawl 'see attached' on the proposal.

They all ask similar questions but not in the same order.

We are a small firm but it still takes a long time writing out the solicitors’ roll numbers, dates of qualification etc.

I know that all companies want to know how many solicitors there are, how many work full time, and what sort of work we do.

To be honest, I can never remember how many people we employ. It always seems a lot.

It used to be simpler but more expensive. We had the dear old Indemnity Fund and then the system was opened up.

I suspect it was seen as a potential gold mine by insurers who may now be ruing the day they entered the market.

Premiums were enormous in the Indemnity Fund days and at least they went down but they are creeping up again.

What interests me is the sort of questions that are asked.

They want to know what sort of work you do now but also have you ever done so and so. This is the sort of are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party? question.

What they want to know of course, quite understandably, is just how many skeletons have you got in your cabinets and cupboards.

They also ask 'do the partners devote all their time and energy to the firm?'. You bet they do. Every waking, and most sleeping, minutes.

And how do insurers and brokers respond when, turning the tables, I send them my standard form which they then have to apply their minds to fitting to the system they have chosen?

Well, reactions vary. At least my attachment is typed so it easier to read than a handwritten form.

Some companies seem to insist on me filling in the whole form.

Perhaps they have a handwriting analyst noting my shaky handwriting when I fill in details of previous claims.