Open door, closed market.

Risk management is often not the order of the day, and the sector is dominated by a handful of players. Adrian Leonard says church insurance is a tough market.

For most brokers, the UK's 48,000 churches represent a market they
have not been able to crack. More than two-thirds of the buildings are
insured direct by the specialist, denominational insurers that were
established in the 19th century.


Perhaps 10% are uninsured, and the few broker customers are different from
most commercial insureds: their decision-making process is slow and
usually handled by a committee, the risks can be extremely complex and
difficult to value because many of the buildings