Tuesday’s announcement that professional indemnity insurer Quinn Insurance Limited – and its UK branch, Quinn Insurance Limited (UK) – has been placed into provisional administration has raised many concerns in the legal sector. Quinn covers some 2,911 solicitors firms, and last year wrote £23.7m worth of business – roughly 10% of the market, making it the fifth-largest provider of indemnity insurance to solicitors

Competence testing is a delicate subject which legal regulators approach with considerable caution. It has been talked about – indeed, SRA chief executive Antony Townsend expressed his desire to move towards it when appointed in 2006 – but the fear with such schemes is that practitioners view them as a form of punishment, rather than being about professional development, maintaining high standards and reassuring the public.

‘Freedom in Practice: Better Outcomes for Consumers’ is being billed as the SRA’s biggest-ever consultation exercise, which is appropriate given that outcomes-focused regulation is such a massive change to the regulation of the profession. It comes with its own logo and website on top of the authority’s usual outreach tools of consultation papers and roadshows.

Those of us with recent experiences of the Financial Services Authority’s changing approach to regulating its industry firms, should be forgiven a wry smile on reading SRA board chairman Charles Plant’s article on ‘outcomes-focused regulation’ which appeared in the Law Society Gazette on 11 February 2010.

I have read with interest the letters in the Gazette about personal injury claims and referral fees over the last few weeks following the release of the Insurers’ report (aka the Jackson report).