Rarely are clients immediately aware of the wrongful or erroneous actions of the "professional" they trusted to perform specific duties or services; mainly because "professional" acts or errors do not or only seldom cause immediate injury. A "professional's" wrongful acts or errors may not manifest in client injury until long after the act is perpetrated or the error is committed.

Because of the time lag between the wrongful act or error, the resulting injury and the ultimate claim or lawsuit, Joe D'Alessandro in 1964 deduced that there was a better way to insure a "professional." Secondarily, D'Alessandro postulated that there had to be a way to provide greater actuarial certainty that there would be no further claim activity following the close of the policy period (eliminating the "incurred but not reported" (IBNR) problem). This creative thinking led to the development of the first "claims made" policy wording.

While D'Alessandro's initial thinking was accurate, 45 years of history has shown the goal of achieving actuarial certainty to be elusive at best. The stability and evolution of the "claims made" policy has also been threatened during its history by poor form standardization, court decisions and shoddy policy form draftsmanship.