insurance-review

---
name: insurance-review
description: Reads your actual policy schedule and wording and turns them into a plain-English map of what you have, what the limits and excesses really are, which warranties and conditions precedent could suspend your cover on an ordinary Tuesday, and what is missing — then converts all of it into numbered questions to put to your broker or insurer in writing. Use before renewal, after a change to how you trade, or when you want to know what would actually happen if you claimed.
---

# The cover you think you have

You give me the documents: the policy schedule, the full policy wording, the renewal invitation, the statement of demands and needs your broker gave you, the employers' liability certificate on the wall, and anything you filled in or signed when you took it out. Phone photos of a folder, a broker's PDF, last year's schedule, all fine. You get back a working document in your own words: every section of cover with its limit, its excess and its sum insured next to it; every warranty and condition precedent written out as a thing a human being has to actually do; the questions where the wording and the way you trade do not line up; and a numbered letter to your broker or insurer asking them to confirm each one in writing. Nothing here tells you that you are covered. Only the policy wording and the insurer decide that, and the whole point of the document is to get their answer on paper before you need it.

## What it does

1. **Build the inventory off the schedule first, before reading a word of the wording.** The schedule is the page that says what you actually bought; the wording is the book that says what those words mean. List, in one table: insurer name, broker name, policy number, the period of insurance with its exact start and end dates, and then every section that appears — employers' liability, public liability, products liability, buildings, tenants' improvements, contents and stock, deterioration of stock, business interruption with its indemnity period, money, glass, goods in transit, loss of licence, legal expenses, cyber, terrorism — each with its sum insured, its limit of indemnity and its excess. Sections that are absent get written down as absent, not left off. These two documents are the ones the argument is fought over: the Financial Ombudsman Service tells insurers that when a business protection complaint reaches it, "In all cases we need a copy of: the policy terms and conditions, policy schedule, the final response letter, and a clear outline of your current position on the complaint". If you cannot produce both, the review stops here and the first question to the broker is a request for the current full wording.

2. **Do employers' liability first, because it is the only one you can be prosecuted for not having.** Section 1(1) of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 is the duty: "Except as otherwise provided by this Act, every employer carrying on any business in Great Britain shall insure, and maintain insurance, under one or more approved policies with an authorised insurer or insurers against liability for bodily injury or disease sustained by his employees, and arising out of and in the course of their employment in Great Britain in that business, but except in so far as regulations otherwise provide not including injury or disease suffered or contracted outside Great Britain." Regulation 3 of the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Regulations 1998 sets the amount at "not less than £5 million in respect of a claim relating to any one or more of those employees arising out of any one occurrence", and GOV.UK puts the same figure in owner's English — the policy must "cover you for at least £5 million" and be "from an authorised insurer". Check four things off the schedule and the certificate: the limit is at least that figure, the insurer is on the Financial Conduct Authority register, the trading names and any subsidiary or associated company you run are all named as insured, and the certificate on the wall covers today's date rather than a period that ended in March. GOV.UK states the price of getting it wrong: "£2,500 every day you are not properly insured", and "£1,000" for not displaying the certificate. Section 5 of the 1969 Act carries it as a criminal offence, punishable "on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale", and extends it to "any director, manager, secretary or other officer of the corporation" where the company's offence was committed with their consent or connivance or facilitated by their neglect.

3. **Read the employers' liability section for conditions the law does not allow it to have.** This is the one place in the whole review where an owner can be told something definite, because Parliament wrote the prohibition itself. Regulation 2(1) of the 1998 Regulations bans a condition making the insurer's liability conditional on anything happening after the event — "some specified thing is done or omitted to be done after the happening of the event giving rise to a claim" — and bans three more outright: the insurer may not exclude liability because "the policy holder does not take reasonable care to protect his employees against the risk of bodily injury or disease", because "the policy holder fails to comply with the requirements of any enactment for the protection of employees against the risk of bodily injury or disease", or because "the policy holder does not keep specified records or fails to provide the insurer with or make available to him information from such records". In a hospitality policy those three describe exactly the sort of clause you find in the general conditions: keep the premises in good repair, comply with health and safety law, keep training records. So if a clause of that shape is written so it appears to apply to the employers' liability section, that is a question, quoted back word for word, asking the insurer to confirm in writing that it does not apply to employers' liability cover. Do not conclude for yourself that it is void.

4. **Go section by section against how the place actually trades, not how the proposal form describes it.** Walk the real week: the covers you do on a Saturday, the private hire in the function room, the two bedrooms above the bar you let out, the barbecue in the beer garden, the coffee cart you take to a market, the wedding you cater off-site, the deliveries, the DJ, the bouncy castle somebody hired in, the walk-in freezer holding four grand of stock, the deep fat fryer, the chargers on the pass, the flat above that you rent to a chef. Then match each one to a section that exists, and name the ones that match nothing. The Ombudsman's own list of what small business cover gets sold as is the checklist worth walking, because it is written from the complaints that arrive: "Professional indemnity insurance, Employer's liability insurance, Public liability insurance, Product liability insurance, Contractor's liability insurance, Goods in transit insurance, Business interruption insurance, Property owner's liability, Commercial legal expenses insurance, Landlord's rent guarantee insurance, Tailored cover". Two traps show up in nearly every hospitality file: food served to the public is a products liability exposure and not always inside the public liability limit, and any vehicle used for deliveries needs cover for that use, because section 143(1) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 says "a person must not use a motor vehicle on a road or other public place unless there is in force in relation to the use of the vehicle by that person such a policy of insurance as complies with the requirements of this Part of this Act". A member of staff dropping off two pizzas in their own car on a social-and-domestic policy is the commonest uninsured hour in the trade.

5. **Hunt out every warranty and condition precedent and rewrite each one as a job somebody has to do on an ordinary Tuesday.** These are the clauses that decide claims, and they are almost never in the schedule — they hide in the wording under headings like general conditions, subjectivities, endorsements, or minimum security requirements. Frying-range protections, a fire extinguisher serviced annually, ducting cleaned to a stated interval, the alarm set whenever the premises are closed, five-lever mortice locks, a maximum cash limit left overnight, no hot work without a permit, a waste bin kept a stated distance from the building, gas and electrical certificates current. For each, write who does it, how often, and where the proof lives. The law changed in your favour on this and most owners have never been told: section 10(1) of the Insurance Act 2015 says "Any rule of law that breach of a warranty (express or implied) in a contract of insurance results in the discharge of the insurer's liability under the contract is abolished", and section 10(2) makes the effect suspensive instead — the insurer "has no liability under a contract of insurance in respect of any loss occurring, or attributable to something happening, after a warranty (express or implied) in the contract has been breached but before the breach has been remedied". The explanatory notes to the Act put it plainly: "The effect of section 10(2) is that breach of warranty by an insured suspends the insurer's liability under the insurance contract from the time of the breach, until such time as the breach is remedied." An alarm that was off for a fortnight is a fortnight of suspended cover, not a cancelled policy.

6. **Then test each of those clauses against section 11, and then check whether your policy has quietly contracted out of it.** Section 11 of the Insurance Act 2015 is the provision that stops an unrelated breach killing an unrelated claim: where the term is one whose compliance "would tend to reduce the risk" of loss of a particular kind, at a particular location, or at a particular time, the insurer "may not rely on the non-compliance to exclude, limit or discharge its liability under the contract for the loss" if you can show "that the non-compliance with the term could not have increased the risk of the loss which actually occurred in the circumstances in which it occurred". The explanatory notes confirm it reaches past warranties: "Section 11(1) does not apply only to warranties and may catch other types of contractual provision such as conditions precedent or exclusion clauses — provided those terms relate to a particular type of loss or loss at a particular location or time." Now the part almost nobody checks. Section 16(2) lets a business policy put you in a worse position than the Act "unless the requirements of section 17 have been satisfied in relation to the term", and section 17(2) requires that "The insurer must take sufficient steps to draw the disadvantageous term to the insured's attention before the contract is entered into or the variation agreed", with section 17(3) requiring the term to be clear and unambiguous as to its effect and section 17(4) judging that by "the characteristics of insured persons of the kind in question, and the circumstances of the transaction". So the question for the broker is not rhetorical: does this policy contract out of sections 10 or 11, where is that term, and when and how was it drawn to my attention. Ask it in writing and keep the answer.

7. **Rebuild the presentation of the risk — what the insurer was told, by whom, and what has changed since.** Section 3(1) of the Insurance Act 2015 is the duty: "Before a contract of insurance is entered into, the insured must make to the insurer a fair presentation of the risk." It requires "disclosure of every material circumstance which the insured knows or ought to know", made "in a manner which would be reasonably clear and accessible to a prudent insurer". Material means, under section 7(3), something that "would influence the judgement of a prudent insurer in determining whether to take the risk and, if so, on what terms", and section 7(4) names "special or unusual facts relating to the risk" and "any particular concerns which led the insured to seek insurance cover for the risk" as examples. Knowledge is not just yours: a company "knows only what is known to one or more of the individuals who are—(a) part of the insured's senior management, or (b) responsible for the insured's insurance", and everyone "ought to know what should reasonably have been revealed by a reasonable search of information available to the insured". The explanatory notes spell out what that search is: "insureds should seek out information about their business by undertaking a reasonable search, which may include making enquiries of their staff and agents (such as their insurance broker)". So the review asks the questions a prudent insurer would have asked and lists the answers that have changed since you last answered them: new trading hours, a late licence, live music, letting rooms, a new cooking method, a change of chef or director, a flat roof or a subsidence history, previous claims at this site or any other you have run, any prosecution, any refusal or cancellation of insurance, any unspent conviction of a director. Every one of those goes in the letter as a disclosure, not as a confession, because the remedies are severe and graduated. Section 8(1) gives the insurer a remedy only where it shows that "but for the breach, the insurer would not have entered into the contract of insurance at all, or would have done so only on different terms". If the breach was deliberate or reckless, Schedule 1 paragraph 2 says the insurer "may avoid the contract and refuse all claims, and need not return any of the premiums paid". If it was neither, the insurer may avoid but "must in that event return the premiums paid" where it would have declined altogether, may impose the terms it would have imposed, or, where it would only have charged more, may reduce the claim proportionately to the premium actually charged against the premium it would have charged. Nothing about any of this gets decided by this document. It gets decided by the insurer on the facts, which is exactly why the facts go to them before the claim rather than after.

8. **Test the sums insured and the indemnity period against real numbers, and say out loud when the number came from nowhere.** Underinsurance is one of the reasons the Ombudsman lists for insurers turning small business claims down — its page on business protection insurance lists, among the reasons a claim may have been declined, "you believe the customer was underinsured" and "the customer didn't provide the correct or adequate information when they took out their policy". So for each figure on the schedule, write down where it came from and when: the buildings sum insured against a reinstatement cost assessment with its date, the contents and tenants' improvements against what it would cost to fit the place out again at today's prices rather than what you paid in 2019, the stock figure against your own busiest week rather than your average, and the business interruption sum insured against the basis the policy actually uses. The indemnity period is the number to interrogate hardest, because it is the one owners set at twelve months by habit and then discover is shorter than the time it takes to get planning, a builder, a new extraction system and a licence transfer after a serious fire. The review never invents a rebuild cost, a gross profit figure or a fit-out value — it names the number on the schedule, names the evidence behind it or the absence of any, and asks the broker in writing how the figure was arrived at, whether average or a condition of underinsurance applies to that section, and what happens to a partial loss if the sum insured turns out to be low.

9. **List what is missing, judged by what would actually close your doors.** Work from the scenarios rather than the product names: a fire in the extraction; the freezer failing over a bank holiday weekend; the street closed for three weeks by somebody else's building work; a burst main upstairs; the licence suspended after an incident; a supplier's contaminated product served to forty covers; an employee taking money over six months; the card system down for a fortnight; an accident on a function-room staircase; a fall at a wedding you catered off-site. Then look for the extension that answers each — denial of access, loss of licence, failure of public utilities, notifiable disease at the premises, deterioration of stock, employee dishonesty, cyber and business interruption following a cyber event, off-site and away-from-premises liability, seasonal increase in stock — and record it as present with its sub-limit, present but sub-limited to a figure that would not cover the event, or absent. The pandemic showed how much turns on the exact words in these extensions rather than on the name of the section: the FCA's business interruption test case went to the Supreme Court, which "handed down its judgment on 15 January 2021 substantially allowing the FCA's appeals and dismissing the insurers' appeals", and the FCA is careful to add that the judgment "does not determine how much is payable under individual policies, but provides the basis for doing so". That is the posture of this whole step. It identifies which words to ask about; it does not decide what they pay.

10. **Turn it into a numbered letter, and check the machinery that runs after you claim.** The output ends as one page addressed to the broker or insurer: numbered questions, each quoting the clause or the schedule line it refers to, each answerable yes or no or with a figure, and each asking for the answer in writing. Ask for the current full wording and the statement of demands and needs alongside it — your broker has a rule about that document, ICOBS 5.2.2R: "Prior to the conclusion of a contract of insurance a firm must specify, on the basis of information obtained from the customer, the demands and the needs of that customer", and ICOBS 5.2.2BR adds that when proposing a contract "a firm must ensure it is consistent with the customer's insurance demands and needs". Ask the same of the insurer's own duty to explain: under ICOBS 6.1 "A firm must ensure that a customer is given appropriate information about a policy in good time and in a comprehensible form so the customer can make an informed decision about the arrangements proposed", including "policy terms, including its main benefits, exclusions, limitations, conditions and its duration". Then write down the claims mechanics in advance, from the wording: the notification deadline, the number to ring out of hours, who is allowed to authorise emergency repairs, and what you must not do before a loss adjuster has seen the damage. An insurer must, under ICOBS 8.1.1R, "handle claims promptly and fairly", "provide reasonable guidance to help a policyholder make a claim and appropriate information on its progress", "not unreasonably reject a claim (including by terminating or avoiding a policy)" and "settle claims promptly once settlement terms are agreed", and section 13A(1) of the Insurance Act 2015 implies into every insurance contract a term that "if the insured makes a claim under the contract, the insurer must pay any sums due in respect of the claim within a reasonable time", which "includes a reasonable time to investigate and assess the claim". Finish with where you go if it fails. The Financial Ombudsman Service describes its own reach as "About 99% of small businesses and micro-enterprises in the UK can bring a complaint to us", a micro-enterprise being a business that "employs fewer than 10 people" and "has an annual turnover or a balance sheet that does not exceed €2 million", and a small business one that "is not a micro-enterprise", "has an annual turnover of less than £6.5 million" and "has a balance sheet total of less than £5 million, or employs fewer than 50 people". Whether your business qualifies is for the Ombudsman to decide against its own rules, so the letter records the thresholds and where they came from rather than announcing that you are eligible.

## Then it checks

1. Every section named on the schedule appears in the inventory with a sum insured or limit, an excess, and either the wording reference that defines it or an explicit note that the wording for that section was not supplied.
2. Every warranty, condition precedent, subjectivity and endorsement found in the wording has been rewritten as a task with a named person, a frequency and a place the evidence lives — and none has been marked complied with or breached, because that is the insurer's call on the facts, not this document's.
3. Every figure that appears in the output is either copied from the owner's own schedule or quoted from a named public source with its section number. No rebuild cost, gross profit, premium, excess or statutory figure has been estimated, rounded or remembered.
4. The employers' liability check has covered all four of: the limit against the figure in the 1998 Regulations, the insurer's authorisation, every trading name and associated company being named as insured, and the certificate covering today's date — or says which of the four could not be checked and why.
5. No sentence anywhere states or implies that a loss is covered, is not covered, would be paid, or would be declined. Every one of those is phrased as a question addressed to the broker or insurer, with the relevant wording quoted back inside it.
6. No insurer, broker, scheme or product is recommended, ranked or named as a better option, and no premium figure appears anywhere in the output.
7. The document opens and closes by saying that it is a working document prepared for the owner's broker or insurer to confirm, that it is not advice, and that only the policy wording and the insurer decide what is covered.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- **Never tell the owner they are covered, or that they are not covered.** Every finding is a question to put to the broker or insurer in writing, with the policy wording quoted back inside the question. This is the whole discipline of the skill: a wrong reassurance here is not a typo, it is the reason somebody does not buy the cover that would have saved the business.
- Never state a premium, and never recommend, rank or steer towards an insurer, broker or scheme. Pricing and placement are regulated advice and this is not that.
- Never state a statutory minimum, fine or threshold that was not read directly off legislation.gov.uk, GOV.UK or an HSE page, and always name which one it came from on the page.
- Never tell an owner that a clause in their policy is void, unenforceable or contracted out. Regulation 2 of the 1998 Regulations and sections 10, 11, 16 and 17 of the Insurance Act 2015 tell you which clauses are worth asking about — they do not let a document like this decide the answer.
- The consumer regime and the business regime are different, and mixing them is a real risk here. The Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012 applies to a contract "between an individual who enters into the contract wholly or mainly for purposes unrelated to the individual's trade, business or profession" and its duty is only "to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation to the insurer". A pub, restaurant, hotel or café policy is not that contract, and the harder duty of fair presentation in the Insurance Act 2015 is the one that applies. Never comfort a business owner with a consumer protection.
- Insurance law is not uniform across the United Kingdom. The Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969 is written for Great Britain; Northern Ireland has its own compulsory employers' liability regime and it was not read for this skill, so an owner in Northern Ireland is told to check theirs rather than given this one.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's insurance broker or insurer to confirm. It is not legal, financial or insurance advice, it is not a regulated recommendation, and it does not determine what is covered. Only the policy wording and the insurer decide that.

## Built from
- Legislation.gov.uk, "Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, section 1", https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1969/57/section/1, read 15 September 2026: the compulsory insurance duty quoted in full in step 2, and the requirement that the policy be an approved policy with an authorised insurer.
- Legislation.gov.uk, "Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969, section 5", https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1969/57/section/5, read 15 September 2026: the offence and the level 4 fine quoted in step 2, and the extension of liability to a director, manager, secretary or other officer.
- Legislation.gov.uk, "The Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Regulations 1998", SI 1998 No. 2573, regulation 2 at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/2573/regulation/2/made and regulation 3 at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/2573/regulation/3/made, with the whole instrument at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1998/2573/made, read 15 September 2026: the four prohibited conditions quoted word for word in step 3, and the "not less than £5 million" figure in step 2. Regulations 4 and 5 supplied the certificate issue, retention and display duties referred to in step 2.
- GOV.UK, "Employers' liability insurance", https://www.gov.uk/employers-liability-insurance, read 15 September 2026: the plain-English duty, the £5 million figure, the authorised insurer requirement, the exemption where you only employ family members or staff based outside England, Scotland and Wales, and the "£2,500 every day you are not properly insured" and "£1,000" penalties quoted in step 2.
- Health and Safety Executive, "How do you get employers' liability insurance?", https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/insurance/liability.htm, and "Get insurance for your business", https://www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/insurance/index.htm, read 15 September 2026: the routes to buying cover and the instruction that the policy "must be with an authorised insurer and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has a list of these", which is why step 2 checks the insurer against the FCA register rather than against the broker's word.
- Legislation.gov.uk, "Insurance Act 2015", https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/4/contents, sections 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13A, 16 and 17 and Schedule 1 each read at their own page under https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/4/, read 15 September 2026: the duty of fair presentation and what is material (step 7), whose knowledge counts and the reasonable search (step 7), the graduated remedies in section 8 and Schedule 1 (step 7), the abolition of discharge for breach of warranty and the suspensive regime in section 10 (step 5), the protection for terms not relevant to the actual loss in section 11 and the contracting-out and transparency provisions in sections 16 and 17 (step 6), and the implied term about paying claims within a reasonable time in section 13A (step 10).
- Legislation.gov.uk, "Insurance Act 2015: Explanatory Notes", https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/4/notes/contents, full text read at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/4/notes/data.xht?view=snippet&wrap=true, read 15 September 2026: paragraph 87 on the suspensive effect of section 10(2) quoted in step 5, paragraph 94 on section 11 reaching conditions precedent and exclusion clauses quoted in step 6, and paragraph 56 on the reasonable search extending to enquiries of staff and agents quoted in step 7.
- Legislation.gov.uk, "Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012", sections 1 and 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/6/section/1 and https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/6/section/2, read 15 September 2026: the definition of a consumer insurance contract and the consumer's lighter duty "to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation to the insurer", quoted in the rules to mark the boundary this skill must not cross.
- Legislation.gov.uk, "Road Traffic Act 1988, section 143", https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/52/section/143, read 15 September 2026: the compulsory third-party motor insurance duty quoted in step 4, behind the delivery-driver question.
- FCA Handbook, ICOBS 8.1 (Insurers: conflict of interest and claims handling), https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/ICOBS/8/1.html, read 15 September 2026: ICOBS 8.1.1R quoted in full in step 10 as the standard an insurer's claims handling is held to.
- FCA Handbook, ICOBS 6.1 (General requirements for insurance product information), https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/ICOBS/6/1.html, read 15 September 2026: the appropriate information rule and the list of what that information covers, quoted in step 10.
- FCA Handbook, ICOBS 5.2 (Demands and needs), https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/ICOBS/5/2.html, read 15 September 2026: ICOBS 5.2.2R and 5.2.2BR quoted in step 10, which is why the letter asks the broker for the statement of demands and needs rather than only for the wording.
- FCA Handbook, DISP 2.7 (Who can refer a complaint?), https://www.handbook.fca.org.uk/handbook/DISP/2/7.html, read 15 September 2026: DISP 2.7.1R, "A complaint may only be dealt with under the Financial Ombudsman Service if it is brought by or on behalf of an eligible complainant", which is why step 10 records the thresholds instead of declaring the owner eligible.
- Financial Ombudsman Service, "Insurance", https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/resolving-complaint/complaints-deal/insurance, last updated 18 October 2022, read 15 September 2026: the four things the Ombudsman takes into account when deciding an insurance complaint, starting with the policy wording.
- Financial Ombudsman Service, "Business protection insurance", https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/resolving-complaint/complaints-deal/insurance/business-protection-insurance, read 15 September 2026: the list of product labels quoted in step 4, the documents the Ombudsman asks for quoted in step 1, and the list of reasons insurers decline business claims — including underinsurance and inadequate information at inception — that shaped steps 7 and 8.
- Financial Ombudsman Service, "Who we can help", https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumers/complaints-can-help/expect/who-we-can-help, read 15 September 2026: the micro-enterprise and small business thresholds quoted in step 10, and the two-year rule for a business that goes temporarily over a threshold.
- Financial Conduct Authority, "Business interruption insurance", https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/business-interruption-insurance, read 15 September 2026: the Supreme Court test case outcome quoted in step 9, and the FCA's own caution that the judgment does not determine how much is payable under an individual policy, which is the posture step 9 adopts.

# insurance-review

## You are given
A folder of insurance papers for one UK hospitality business: the policy schedule, the full policy wording, the renewal invitation, the statement of demands and needs, a phone photograph of the employers' liability certificate on the wall, the proposal form or statement of fact signed at inception, endorsements and subjectivity letters sent separately, and any correspondence with the broker. Pages will be out of order, some will be photographs of photographs, and the wording for at least one section will be missing. Alongside them, Claude has already read the wording, walked the real trading week with the owner, and decided which clauses matter and which mismatches are worth asking about. That decided material arrives as a text, CSV or Markdown file in the same folder, listing each finding with the clause or schedule line it came from. Claude decides what to look for; Codex extracts, transcribes, tabulates and turns every finding into a written question.

## Produce
Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `policy-facts.csv` - columns exactly, in this order: `fact,value_as_printed,source_file,page_or_schedule_reference,status`. `status` is `read from the documents supplied` or `not found in the papers supplied`. One row for each of: insurer as named, broker as named, policy number, period of insurance start date, period of insurance end date, named insured, every additional trading name insured, every subsidiary or associated company insured, business description as printed, each insured address, wording version or reference, date the wording was issued. **No premium, insurance premium tax, commission or fee figure is written in this file or anywhere else in the pack.**
2. `cover-inventory.csv` - one row per section, including sections that are absent. Columns exactly, in this order:
`section_ref,section_name_as_printed_on_the_schedule,present_or_absent,sum_insured_gbp,limit_of_indemnity_gbp,inner_or_sub_limits_gbp,excess_gbp,basis_of_settlement_as_printed,indemnity_period_months,wording_reference,wording_supplied_yes_no,question_ref,source_file,page_or_schedule_reference`
 - Sections named in the decided material that do not appear on the schedule are written as rows with `present_or_absent` of `absent`, never omitted.
 - Where a figure is not printed, the cell reads `not printed on the schedule`. Never a rounded, converted or inferred figure.
3. `employers-liability-check.csv` - exactly four rows, one per check. Columns exactly: `check,what_the_schedule_or_certificate_says,source_file,page_or_certificate_reference,status,question_ref`. The four checks, in this order: the limit of indemnity as printed; the insurer as printed and whether the papers show it on the Financial Conduct Authority register; every trading name, subsidiary and associated company named as insured; the certificate period against today's date. `status` is `read from the documents supplied` or `could not be checked` with the reason written in the cell. **Never `pass`, `fail`, `compliant`, `adequate` or `in order`.**
4. `warranties-and-conditions.csv` - one row per warranty, condition precedent, subjectivity, endorsement and minimum security requirement found anywhere in the wording or the schedule. Columns exactly, in this order:
`clause_ref,heading_as_printed,section_it_appears_under,clause_text_verbatim,wording_page,what_it_requires_in_plain_words,frequency_as_written,who_would_do_it,where_the_evidence_would_live,question_ref,source_file`
 - `clause_text_verbatim` is quoted word for word, in quotation marks, never paraphrased and never two clauses joined into one quotation.
 - There is no `complied` column and no `breached` column. Whether a clause has been kept is the insurer's call on the facts, not this pack's.
5. `how-the-place-trades.csv` - one row per activity described in the inputs. Columns exactly: `activity_as_described_by_the_owner,when_it_happens,section_that_appears_to_answer_it,section_ref,section_present_yes_no,question_ref,source_file`. Activities the decided material matched to no section get a row with `section_that_appears_to_answer_it` reading `no section on the schedule appears to answer this` and a question reference. Never a `covered` column.
6. `sums-insured-evidence.csv` - columns exactly: `section_ref,figure_on_the_schedule_gbp,basis_of_settlement_as_printed,evidence_supplied,evidence_date,who_assessed_it,carried_forward_yes_no,average_or_underinsurance_condition_quoted,question_ref,source_file`. Where no evidence for a figure is in the folder, `evidence_supplied` reads `no evidence supplied` and a question is raised. No rebuild cost, fit-out value, stock figure or gross profit figure is ever calculated, estimated or indexed here.
7. `scenarios-and-extensions.csv` - one row per scenario in the decided material. Columns exactly: `scenario,extension_or_section_looked_for,section_ref,present_absent_or_sub_limited,sub_limit_gbp,wording_quoted,question_ref,source_file`. `present_absent_or_sub_limited` is one of exactly `present`, `absent`, `present with a sub-limit`, `wording not supplied`.
8. `questions-for-the-broker.csv` - the master register every other file points into. Columns exactly, in this order:
`question_ref,topic,question_text,clause_or_schedule_line_quoted,wording_reference,answer_required,answer_received,date_answered,source_file`
 - `question_ref` is `Q-001` upwards and is never reused.
 - `question_text` is answerable yes or no, with a figure, or by supplying a document. Every question carries the wording quoted back inside it.
 - `answer_required` is one of exactly `yes or no in writing`, `a figure in writing`, `the wording or document`, `confirmation in writing`.
 - `answer_received` and `date_answered` ship empty.
9. `claims-machinery.csv` - columns exactly: `item,what_the_wording_says_verbatim,wording_reference,source_file,status`. One row for each of: notification deadline, how notification must be made, the out-of-hours number, who may authorise emergency repairs, what must not be done before a loss adjuster attends, the claims address, and the complaints route named in the wording. `status` is `quoted from the wording supplied` or `wording for this not supplied`.
10. `letter-to-broker.md` - `DRAFT - UNSENT` on the first line. Then the business as named on the schedule, the policy number, the period of insurance, and the questions from file 8 in `question_ref` order, numbered, each with its quoted clause underneath it and the answer required stated. It closes by requesting the current full policy wording and the statement of demands and needs. It is signed off in the owner's name only where the inputs give it, and never in anyone else's.
11. `not-supplied.md` - a numbered list of every document the review needed and did not have, every section whose wording was missing, every figure with no evidence behind it, and every question that could not be framed because the underlying page was unreadable. For each, say what was looked for, where it was looked for, and what it stops the pack from doing.
12. `README.md` - what was read, the page count, the period of insurance, the count of sections present and absent, the count of warranties and conditions found, the number of questions raised, and what could not be read.

## Rules
- **Never say that anything is covered or not covered, would be paid or would be declined, is insured or is uninsured.** Those words and every synonym for them are banned from every output, including the letter and the README. Every finding becomes a row in `questions-for-the-broker.csv` with the wording quoted back inside the question. A wrong reassurance here is not a typo: it is the reason somebody does not buy the cover that would have saved the business.
- **Never name, recommend, rank, compare or steer towards an insurer, broker, scheme, product or market.** The only insurer and broker named anywhere are the ones printed on the owner's own papers, and they are written as facts read off a document, never as a judgement.
- **Never write a premium, an insurance premium tax figure, a commission figure, a fee or an estimate of any of them**, anywhere in the pack, including in a quotation from the schedule. Where a schedule line carries a premium, transcribe the surrounding fact and omit the figure.
- **Never reconstruct, reproduce, paraphrase or work an example of the Insurance Act 2015 Schedule 1 proportionate-reduction formula.** The definition of X per cent is published on legislation.gov.uk as inline images and could not be read. Where the mechanism is relevant, quote the Act's own words for it and stop. No arithmetic, no worked example, no percentage.
- **Never tell the owner that a clause in their policy is void, unenforceable, inapplicable or contracted out**, and never mark a warranty complied with or breached. The prohibited-condition rules for employers' liability and the contracting-out provisions of the Insurance Act 2015 tell you which clauses are worth asking about. They do not let this pack decide the answer. Each becomes a question quoting the clause and asking the insurer to confirm in writing.
- Never state a statutory minimum, penalty, threshold or limit that is not in the decided material with its named source beside it. Never supply one from memory, and never round or convert one.
- Never apply the consumer disclosure regime to this business. A pub, restaurant, hotel, bar, cafe or venue policy is a commercial contract and the harder duty of fair presentation applies. Never comfort the owner with a consumer protection.
- The compulsory employers' liability regime cited in the decided material is written for Great Britain. Where the inputs place the premises in Northern Ireland, write no employers' liability figure at all, say so in `not-supplied.md`, and raise it as a question.
- Never alter, tidy, correct, complete or reword anything read from a policy document. Where two documents disagree, write both rows, cite both source files, and list the conflict in `not-supplied.md`.
- Every row in every file traces to a supplied input named in `source_file` with a page, schedule or certificate reference. A row without both does not exist.
- Send nothing, sign nothing, submit nothing and email nothing. `letter-to-broker.md` stays a draft on disk.
- British English, £, dates written as DD Month YYYY. No em dash characters anywhere. No emoji.
- Every output file carries, as its first line or its first row: "Working document prepared for the owner's insurance broker or insurer to confirm before it is relied on. It is not legal, financial or insurance advice, it is not a regulated recommendation, and it does not determine what is covered. Only the policy wording and the insurer decide that."

## Return
The absolute path of each of the twelve files with their row counts, the number of pages read, the period of insurance, the count of sections present and absent, the count of warranties, conditions precedent, subjectivities and endorsements extracted, the number of questions raised in `questions-for-the-broker.csv`, which of the four employers' liability checks could not be made and why, and every entry in `not-supplied.md`. State plainly that no output says anything is covered or not covered, that no insurer was recommended, that no premium appears anywhere, and that the Schedule 1 formula was not reconstructed.