Every answer and its explanation appears here once you have finished the path. Each one then links to the matching glossary entry, where the concept is set out in full with its worked example.
1. A directors' policy operates on a claims-made basis. What exactly does it respond to?
Claims made during its period, and not acts committed during it
The shift is easy to state and hard to internalize, because intuition naturally attaches cover to the moment of the wrong: here the date that counts is the claim's, and everything else in the module follows from that. A director can be pursued years after a decision, and the policy covering the time of that decision will have expired. The cumulative answer describes a mixed basis some wordings do use, and confusing it with the general rule leads to believing an old act stays covered by a new policy, which is wrong in both directions.
Glossary entry →2. What exactly does run-off do, and when is it bought?
It opens no new cover: it keeps a window open on a closed period, for the benefit of those leaving, and is bought by closing at the latest
The two halves hold together: because it covers nothing new, it bears on a period that closes at completion, and because it attaches to the existing policy, that policy must still be alive when it is bought. It is the one protection in a deal that a delay destroys rather than makes more expensive, and that is what sets it apart from every other line in the timetable, where arriving late costs more without closing anything. The answer speaking of a transfer to the acquirer describes a step nothing compels and the acquirer has no reason to take once the deal is done.
Glossary entry →3. Run-off protects people who take no part in the negotiation. What practical consequence follows?
Whoever inherits the task sometimes has an interest opposed to theirs: it is written as a quantified obligation in the sale agreement, not as an intention
A well-meaning intention does not survive a budget call made by someone whose protection it is not, days before completion, in a list of costs to settle. That is why the duration, the amount and who bears the cost are written down, and the check fits in one line of the agreement rather than in trust. The answer relying on representation by the company forgets that the company changes hands at exactly that moment. The one deferring to a later purchase describes the outcome the previous question closes, the original policy having by then expired.
Glossary entry →4. After the sale, a former director is pursued and the company refuses to indemnify him. Which section of the policy matters to him?
Only the one paying him directly: the reimbursement section is worthless to a director the company refuses to indemnify
The reimbursement section presupposes the company has paid, and a company that has just changed shareholder has no reason to pay for the decisions of those who sold it: the only section that then matters is the one paying the director without going through it. The distinction looks technical while the policy is read in amounts, and it decides everything as soon as it is read in flows. Believing no section responds for want of indemnification by the company amounts precisely to knowing only the reimbursement section.
Glossary entry →5. Among the deadlines in a sale timetable, what makes the run-off one different from all the others?
A delay destroys it instead of making it more expensive: everywhere else, arriving late costs more and closes nothing
That is what justifies its place in the timetable rather than in a list of points to handle: everywhere else a delay is paid for and made up, here it removes a possibility. Knowing it changes the order in which an end-of-deal list is worked, and that is this module's one useful effect on how a file is run. The answer invoking cost names a real and unrelated parameter: run-off is the only line whose date is absolute, and its price does not change that.
Glossary entry →