Once upon a time, the professions were very easy to define: doctors, lawyers, accountants and architects. But things are not so simple now.

Read Deb Ropelewski's previous Sounding Board column, “Complex Exposures for Complex Times.”

We have become an increasingly service-oriented economy, and the “business and professional services” sector of the workforce, which had been growing rapidly, is now rebounding after the effects of the economic downturn. So what does this have to do with insurance, and specifically, professional liability insurance?

Over the last 20 years or so, the definition of “profession” significantly has expanded because of this explosion in the types of services provided. Practitioners, over time, may be held to increasingly higher standards of care as their particular areas of expertise evolve and mature. The public demands an increasingly higher standard of care, and the activity may become more highly regulated, with licensure required. Trade groups and associations begin to set standards of conduct and best practices and ultimately, new industry-wide standards and new types of certifications or designations may evolve.

So what happens as these activities and the resulting liabilities move away from a typical CGL exposure into a quasi-professional exposure? The first stop is usually in the “miscellaneous professional liability” bucket. Over time, a particular category of exposure may evolve and become more defined and develop enough loss and exposure data to become actuarially predictable, etc. At that point, they become mature enough to spin off onto their own specialized professional liability insurance products. A good example of this is real estate professionals, which are now primarily written on specialty insurance products. Until that happens, they remain under the purview of miscellaneous professional liability.

Everyone needs a hero, and mine are the miscellaneous professional liability underwriters. I truly believe that they have the toughest job in the professional liability insurance market. My background is medical professional liability and, whether you are underwriting physicians or healthcare facilities, it always seemed that there were pretty standard risk characteristics to look for, not to say that you couldn't be thrown the occasional curve ball!

But on any given day, a miscellaneous professional liability underwriter may entertain a very wide range of applicants, in very diverse industries and representing professional liability exposures from a wide spectrum of risks. These could range from consultants (a broad category in and of itself), to funeral directors, appraisers, inspectors, and, dare I say it, “professional” tattoo artists. Each of these risks contains its own unique and wide-ranging characteristics, and it is up to the underwriter to adequately assess and price these risks.

For these reasons, my hat is off to these dedicated industry professionals!