When a director gets named in a regulatory notice, the conversation in their lawyer's office is not about premium. It is about wording: which exclusions apply, what the entity-versus-individual coverage allocation looks like, whether legal-defence costs are inside or outside the limit, what the order of payment provision says, whether the conduct exclusion has a final adjudication trigger.
Most D&O policies in the Indian market are still placed on a premium-comparison basis. A broker presents three quotes. The cheapest within the requested limit is bound. The wording is rarely studied — and when it is, it is read as a formality rather than as the contract that decides whether the directors can sleep at night.
Real D&O benchmarking starts with the wording, not the price. We compare policies on twelve dimensions that shape claim outcomes: severability of insureds, allocation methodology, defence-cost advancement triggers, regulatory investigation cover scope, IPO and capital-raise extensions, conduct exclusion construction, prior-acts and continuous-coverage provisions, side-A DIC availability, run-off triggers, settlement consent provisions, claims-made notification mechanics, and choice of jurisdiction.
Two policies at identical premium and limit can score very differently across those twelve dimensions. The cheaper one is sometimes the better one. More often, it is not — and the directors who bound it learn that during the most expensive week of their professional lives.
If your board is signing off on D&O renewals based on premium comparison, you are protecting nobody. Get a second opinion on the wording before the next renewal binds.
