Deep Dive: The biBERK E&O Policy: A Great Name on a Wrong Form

Berkshire Hathaway sells E&O insurance for RIAs. The name alone makes you feel safe. It shouldn't.

biBERK is Berkshire Hathaway's direct-to-business insurance arm. They sell a Miscellaneous Professional Liability policy through National Liability & Fire Insurance Company. The policy we reviewed carries $3,000,000 per wrongful act and $3,000,000 aggregate limits with a $5,000 retention. The annual premium runs $4,629 for $3,000,000 in limits. That pricing is insane. You will not find limits like that at a price like that from a purpose-built RIA policy. But price means nothing if the policy won't pay.

We read every policy the same way. Read it like a claims adjuster who hates paying claims. Find the language that gives them an exit. That's what matters.

Updated September 4, 2026: we have since read a full 2026 biBERK policy issued to an RIA. Two additions below: the Exclusion of Owned Property Change Endorsement, and what the contract actually says about changing your premium mid-term.

The Good

First, the carrier. National Liability & Fire Insurance Company sits under the Berkshire Hathaway umbrella. A.M. Best gives them an A++ rating. The highest a carrier can get. The check clears when a claim gets paid. No questions about solvency. No worry about the carrier folding mid-claim. That part is solid.

Second, this is an individual policy. Your limits belong to you. No group plan. No shared aggregate with strangers. The $3,000,000 limit sits there for your firm and your firm alone. That matters when a claim hits six figures and you need every dollar available.

Third, the policy includes a Security and Privacy Liability endorsement. It adds cyber coverage with a $250,000 sub-limit for data breaches, regulatory actions, and privacy violations. Most RIAs handle sensitive client data. Cyber protection baked in saves you from buying a separate policy on day one.

The Bad

Here's where the claims adjuster starts smiling.

This is a Miscellaneous Professional Liability form. That word, miscellaneous, explains the problem. biBERK sells the same chassis to accountants, consultants, and financial planners. You go to their website and the first thing they ask is what industry you're in. That tells you everything. They bolt on endorsements and call it done. A form built for everyone doesn't know that trade errors are the most common claim an RIA faces. A client tells you to buy 500 shares of a stock. You forget. The stock runs up 30%. The client wants to be made whole. Policies designed for advisors build in coverage for this exact scenario. This policy says nothing about it. When the policy does not address trade errors, you are left arguing for coverage after the claim happens.

Exclusion 8 should keep you up at night. It excludes claims arising from violation of the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, any state blue sky or securities law, and any similar state or federal law. Think about that. You are a registered investment advisor. Nearly every claim against an RIA alleges a securities law violation. That's how plaintiff attorneys build these cases. A client sues you for bad advice. Their attorney alleges you breached your fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act. Now the carrier has an exclusion it can point to when deciding whether the claim is covered. This policy excludes the one set of laws that governs everything you do as an RIA. A policy built for advisors would never contain this language. This one does.

The Certified Financial Planner endorsement does two opposite things at once. Start with the base form. Exclusion 10 rules out the performance of services that can only be performed by a certified public accountant, a certified financial planner, or a securities or investment advisor or broker/dealer. On the unendorsed form, in other words, this policy excludes your job.

The endorsement deletes those three items. Without that deletion, the base policy excludes the work you are buying the policy to cover. So the endorsement gives that coverage back with one hand, then adds six new exclusions with the other: services for any entity in which you or your spouse holds more than 49%, or serves as a partner, director, officer, member, board member or trustee; services for an estate or trust where either of you is a beneficiary or distributee; tax shelters; guarantees about future performance, rates of return or tax consequences; services as an executor, administrator or trustee; and theft, commingling or conversion of funds.

Look closely at the first one. You do not need to own the entity. A position is enough. Sit on a nonprofit board and advise that nonprofit, and you are inside the exclusion. Plenty of advisers do exactly that.

The Owned Property Endorsement

There is a second endorsement on this form that concerns me even more than Exclusion 8. The Exclusion of Owned Property Change Endorsement amends Section III, Exclusions, Section A, and adds this to the list of things the carrier will not defend or pay:

The performance of Insured Services involving any property in which the Insured or any of the Insured's Direct Relatives have or had an ownership or equity interest as an individual, partner, shareholder or fiduciary.

The endorsement defines Direct Relatives, and the list runs long: your parents, grandparents, siblings and children, your spouse, and your spouse's parents, grandparents, siblings and children, step-relations and adoptions included. It does not define property. Every other key term in that sentence is defined and printed in bold. Property is not. That leaves room to argue about what the word means after a claim happens.

Now read how broad the rest of the sentence is. Insured Services includes your advice. An equity interest as a shareholder could mean a single share of stock. And ‘have or had’ includes no stated time limit. The problem gets big fast depending on what ‘property’ means.

The undefined word is where the damage happens. If property means the specific shares your grandmother holds, the exclusion is relatively narrow. If it means the security itself, then recommending a stock your father-in-law owns is excluded, and so is a good part of what you would put in a client portfolio. Nothing in the endorsement tells you which reading applies. That means you could end up arguing about the meaning of ‘property’ after a claim happens.

Compare CalSurance. Their Exclusion N started in the same place and was fixed by endorsement to carve back the advice or recommendation to purchase shares of securities on an exchange the insured also invests in. An adviser there can own what they recommend. We covered that policy here. This endorsement has no carve-back at all, and it reaches past the adviser into the family.

The policy knows how to define a property term when it wants to. Section V defines Property Damage, and it limits that term to physical injury to tangible property. The owned property endorsement does not say tangible. It does not say Property Damage. It just says property. No qualifier. No definition. Securities can fall within the ordinary meaning of property.

This is not hypothetical, and it is not on every policy. We read a 2026 biBERK policy issued to an RIA and the endorsement is on it, listed on the declarations forms schedule as MPL 00 90 11 15. The form carries a 2015 edition date, so the language is not new, but it appears to get attached to some policies and not others. Pull your own declarations page and read the list of attached forms. If it is there, this applies to you. If it is not, it can still arrive at renewal.

We have not seen National Liability & Fire apply the exclusion this broadly. A court could also interpret ‘property’ more narrowly. But the meaning of an undefined word is not something you want to litigate after a claim lands. If you are looking at this policy, ask for the carrier's definition of property in writing before you bind.

About That Midterm Bill

We have heard from advisers who say biBERK came back during the policy term asking for more premium. So we read a 2026 biBERK policy issued to an RIA, cover to cover, looking for the provision that allows a unilateral midterm premium adjustment. We couldn't find one.

The word audit appears exactly once in the entire contract, in a list of the insured's duties to provide information when asked. There is no premium audit clause. No exposure true-up. No year-end adjustment. The premium condition says the First Named Insured pays the amount stated in the Declarations, and that the premium may be adjusted during the policy period based on changes in the provisions of the policy,

as may be agreed upon by the First Named Insured and the Company.

Agreed upon. Both parties. The only other place the policy lets them ask for more money mid-term is when you add activities or entities to the coverage by endorsement, and then only for that addition.

So if biBERK asks for more premium during a term you already paid for, and you have not changed the policy, ask why. The contract we reviewed does not appear to give the carrier a unilateral right to re-rate you. Ask them in writing which provision they are relying on. Make them point at the page.

For contrast, here is what normal looks like in this market. The carriers we place RIA E&O with quote a price for the term and hold it. If your firm grows, you get underwritten again at renewal and you get a new number for the next term (unless you acquire another company or buy a book of business). What they do not do is reopen the bill in the middle of a year you already paid for.

The Bottom Line

For the right profession, this could be a great policy. Great carrier. Great price. Great limits. But RIAs have a different problem. Exclusion 8, the owned property endorsement, and the silence on trade errors cut straight into what an adviser actually does.

You save money up front and hope nothing goes sideways. That's not insurance. That's a bet.

This is part of our ongoing series breaking down E&O policies sold to RIAs. Read our NAPA Benefits breakdown, CalSurance review, E&O for Less deep dive, and XYPN review.

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