How persistence — and understanding the Lloyd’s market — turned a rejected R&D claim into a full settlement
Client story: Advent Insurance Management (AIM)
AIM came to Vantage after a frustrating experience with a well-known R&D claims agency. The technical work was sound, but AIM’s directors felt the agency’s key personnel weren’t engaged with the detail of what AIM had built or with AIM as a client. On their accountant’s recommendation, AIM moved their R&D claims work to Vantage.
That mattered more than it might elsewhere. AIM’s business sits within the Lloyd’s insurance market — a world with its own structures, terminology and market bodies (delegated authority, managing agents, the LMA) that most people outside it, including many R&D advisers, don’t understand well enough to explain convincingly to HMRC. Getting the technical narrative right meant getting the market context right first.
Why the claim was flagged
HMRC opened a compliance check into AIM’s claim for the accounting period ending December 2022, covering the development of new contract automation technology. Only once the enquiry was underway did we recognise a likely reason for its selection: facing significant pressure to reduce R&D fraud, HMRC introduced SIC-code-based flagging around this time, targeting claims from sectors where R&D activity isn’t typically expected. AIM’s registered code — insurance broker — is exactly the kind of classification that the flagging was designed to catch, regardless of the substance of the underlying work.
The work behind the claim
The enquiry ran for the best part of three years, and defending it properly meant more than exchanging letters. We wrote detailed technical reports setting out what AIM had built and why it represented a genuine technological advance and held direct telephone calls with HMRC’s Inspector to work through the technical detail in real time.
No matter how much we explained that the baseline had been extended, that there was no existing solution, and that the ‘research’ they had done only proved that the technology didn’t exist, HMRC’s caseworker rejected the claim regardless, arguing that the work was routine insurance business rather than genuine technological development and that comparable tools already existed in the market (they didn’t).
We pushed back in detail at every stage, and when HMRC’s Statutory Officer review (SOLs) upheld the rejection anyway, we had a Teams call with AIM to decide how to proceed. AIM was, understandably, unsure whether it was worth pursuing further — two rejections in, it’s a fair question to ask.
We were convinced the work qualified and said so plainly. AIM trusted that judgement and agreed to proceed. We formally applied for a First-tier Tribunal hearing rather than let the case rest on the existing correspondence, and shortly afterwards HMRC proposed Alternative Dispute Resolution. Not long after that, HMRC withdrew from the case entirely — the claim was settled in full, at the amount originally claimed, without ever reaching the Tribunal.
In AIM’s words
Paul Bermingham, CEO, AIM & Eliptic
"When HMRC rejected our claim twice, Vantage never wavered. Their technical understanding of our business and their persistence through a near-three-year enquiry secured us a full settlement without ever going to Tribunal. That's the kind of adviser you want in your corner."
Not every R&D adviser will stay the course when HMRC pushes back. AIM's case shows what it takes: technical reports written properly the first time, direct engagement with HMRC rather than distance from it, and the conviction to keep going through two rejections rather than accepting HMRC’s decision. If your claim is technically sound, they deserve an adviser who will defend it as thoroughly as it was prepared. If you are facing a compliance check — or a claim you're unsure was given the attention it needed elsewhere — get in touch, and we'll take a proper look.
