Surety

Surety insurance protects businesses that are investing in high value, high risk projects. In these scenarios, it is essential to work with advisers that understand the surety market and can mitigate the risks should something go wrong.

With a wealth of experience in this specialist practice area, our surety insurance team are internationally recognised experts in performance bonds, guarantees and indemnities.

What do we do?

Surety bond service

The surety insurance advisory team within Gateley Vinden have been advising the major surety companies as loss adjusters on all aspects of liability under bonds, primarily, but not exclusively, construction bonds both in the UK and Ireland. Originally part of Tozer Gallagher, the team joined Gateley Vinden in July 2021 and regularly work alongside the Gateley Legal surety team. They have been involved with many of the leading judgements concerning construction performance bonds and their experience enables them to engage quickly and meaningfully with all stakeholders to explore opportunities for the settlement of claims in a professional manner.

Surety legal advisers

Our surety insurance team advises on both contentious and non-contentious legal issues relating to any surety, drawing on the support of other specialists across the Gateley group when required.

The non-contentious work covered by our surety insurance team includes:

• performance and retention bonds on large PFI projects;
• the underlying building contracts on a project;
• advance payment bonds and other on-demand wordings;
• various types of pension bond;
• bespoke bonds and proposed variations to standard bond wordings;
• indemnity wordings; and
• advising on the insolvency and restructuring of large groups of construction companies.

The contentious work covered by our surety insurance team includes:

• disputes over the liability and quantum of bond claims;
• breach of contract, damages and loss and expense claims;
• claims for delay and disruption, extension of time and liquidated ascertained damages;
• disputes relating to defective works and design liability;
• disputes over the wording of ‘on-demand’ and ‘conditional’ bonds.

Who do we help?

Our surety insurance team advises sureties on a variety of matters covering a wide range of sectors. We regularly act for many household surety names, including ACE, Aviva, Euler Hermes, HCC, QBE and Zurich.