Counsel's Corners

Introduction: The Boardroom Has Never Carried More Personal Risk   Serving as a company director has always carried personal legal responsibility. You owe duties to shareholders, to the company, and under certain circumstances to broader stakeholders. You must act with reasonable care, exercise independent judgment, and advance the company's interests honestly. These obligations have existed for generations and are well understood. What has changed in 2026 — and changed dramatically — is the ESG dimension of executive accountability. Environmental, Social, and Governance obligations are no longer soft corporate commitments that companies make to improve their public image and attract responsible investors. They are increasingly hard legal requirements, carrying formal certification obligations, regulatory enforcement powers, and genuine personal liability for the directors and officers who sign off on them. Greenwashing litigation — legal proceedings claiming that compa...

Introduction: Your Supplier's Insurance Problem Can Become Your Financial Crisis  Most businesses manage their own insurance carefully. Policies are reviewed at renewal. Limits are assessed against exposure. Brokers are consulted. The programme feels solid. Then a critical supplier's warehouse burns down. Their insurer drags the claim, or the insurer turns out to be financially weaker than anyone realised. The supplier cannot fund recovery from their own balance sheet. Operations stop for three months. And when you attempt to claim on your own business interruption policy for the resulting production shutdown, you discover a gap you never knew was there — non-damage business interruption from a supplier failure, excluded by an endorsement buried in your policy wording. This is the domino effect — one vendor's insurance failure becomes your uninsured loss. And in 2026's hyper-connected commercial economy, it is one of the most underappreciated and underinsured risks...

Introduction: When the Premium Becomes the Problem   What if instead of sending your insurance premiums to a company you will never meet — one that profits when your claims are low — you sent them to a company you own? What if, in years where your business manages risk well and claims stay below expectations, you kept the underwriting profit rather than surrendering it to a third-party insurer? That is the fundamental proposition of captive insurance — and in 2026, mid-sized businesses across the UK and USA are exploring it in greater numbers than ever before. For years, captive insurance was perceived as a tool exclusively for the largest multinational corporations. The capital requirements seemed prohibitive for mid-market businesses. The regulatory complexity seemed beyond the bandwidth of organisations without dedicated risk management departments. And frankly, when commercial premiums were reasonable, the economics of building your own insurance company did not comp...

Introduction: The Product That Hides in Plain Sight   You book a flight online. At the checkout screen, a small box is pre-ticked. Travel insurance has been added to your order. You did not ask for it. You almost missed it. You may not even notice it until you see the total. That is embedded insurance — and the company that added it to your basket without your explicit consent may have just violated regulatory requirements on both sides of the Atlantic. Embedded insurance is one of the fastest-growing distribution models in financial services. In 2026, technology companies, car manufacturers, e-commerce platforms, fintech businesses, and major retailers are all integrating insurance products directly into their customer journeys. The appeal from a business perspective is compelling: higher transaction values, improved customer retention, recurring revenue streams, and deeper commercial relationships — all without becoming an insurer yourself. The legal risks, however, are...