The Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has joined forces with the Injury Prevention Consultancy (IPC) on a campaign to improve protection for performers and crew in film, television and theatre, a move that places the London market at the centre of efforts to tighten on-set safety.
As title partner for the next phase of IPC's research, the CII will host a roundtable of London Market stakeholders to examine how insurers and brokers can help the creative sector raise safety standards. Contributions from underwriters, brokers and claims professionals will feed into IPC's Impact of Injury 2026 (IOI26) report, which aims to inform targeted injury-prevention models and policies.
The initiative follows IPC's 2025 Impact of Injury report, which found that nearly 80% of cast and crew working in stage or screen productions have been injured at some point in their careers. The research highlighted a lack of preventative measures and pointed to a culture in which workers are reluctant to speak up when they feel at risk, for fear of jeopardising future work in a largely freelance industry.
IOI26 will provide an updated, industry-wide view of progress, ongoing challenges and priorities for action. It will examine the impact of injury on workers’ health and livelihoods, as well as on production timelines, insurance claims and long-term workforce retention.
A more robust evidence base on when and how injuries occur could offer greater insight into claims drivers across personal accident, employers’ liability and production policies. It may also support more informed underwriting and risk engineering, particularly on high-risk productions involving stunt work, complex sets or demanding schedules.
“Performers and crew working on stage and screen can be pushed through pain, fear and fatigue in the name of creative vision. This comes at a cost to mental and physical health, as well as livelihoods," said CII CEO Matthew Hill. "While performers may be afraid to speak up about their safety, we are in a position to improve these environments by pushing up standards through suitable policies."
The roundtable is expected to create a forum to discuss how insurance can support better practice in wordings, risk surveys and minimum safety standards. Areas of focus are likely to include formal risk assessments, stunt and fight co-ordination, fatigue management, training, near-miss reporting and the use of independent safety supervisors on set.
Improved controls in these areas could help reduce both the human cost of accidents and the frequency and severity of people-related claims, while giving insurers greater confidence in capacity deployment on more complex productions.
Over time, more granular data may allow for greater differentiation between productions that invest in robust safety frameworks and those that do not, rather than relying primarily on budget, location or headline stunt content as proxies for risk.
"Injury in production is a widespread, underreported and under examined problem and the absence of data in this arena correlates to a vacuum in policy and effective risk management," said IPC founder Tome Levi. "The CII's support marks a pivotal step in ensuring that this work receives the platform it deserves, and underscores the growing cross-sector consensus that how we make the work, matters."
The collaboration signals a shift towards more data-driven injury prevention in a sector where covers are often complex and bespoke, but where underlying safety practices have not always kept pace with the scale and ambition of modern productions.
