Professional Indemnity Insurance
Have you ever wondered what professional indemnity insurance is and how you can apply this to your insurance needs? Professional indemnity insurance is a potentially complex field of insurance, and to this end, understanding what it covers is crucial before you take out any policies.
Fortunately, our team is on hand today to help you find out more about professional indemnity insurance. Hopefully, this will help you to determine whether this could be a valuable option for your business to consider. If you would like to read more information or learn more about the pricing of business insurance, you can do so here.
What is Professional Indemnity Insurance?
First things first, we need to consider the question of, “what is professional indemnity insurance?”
Professional indemnity insurance policies are rapidly becoming more popular with businesses, and for a good reason. Indeed, these PI insurance policies can protect your business if a deliverable should cause financial or reputational damages to the client. Hence, for any firm that provides content and services, PI insurance could be an excellent investment to have.
Professional indemnity insurance is not necessarily a requirement for every business. However, professionals involved in particular fields may need to hold this insurance as a legal requirement (such as financial advisors, insurance agents, mortgage brokers, accountants, and attorneys.
What Does Professional Indemnity Insurance Cover?
So, what does professional indemnity insurance cover? These policies are generally tailored by the insurer around your firm’s business model, depending on the services that you offer.
For example, if you are providing logo design services and the logo that you design for your client translates into reduced sales potential for the client, it is possible that they could sue you for their losses.
Alternatively, as a website content creator, you could again face a lawsuit if you provided content that was factually inaccurate or otherwise offensive and resulted in financial or reputational losses for the client.
Professional indemnity insurance covers these scenarios. Indeed, having insurance in place for these policies can help your business ensure it remains protected, even in case a lawsuit is filed against you.
Of course, every PI insurance policy will differ.
However, most professional indemnity insurance policies will cover claims made against the business for poor quality services resulting in losses to the client. Some examples of scenarios covered under these policies can include (but may not be limited to):
- Professional negligence cases whereby incorrect advice is given
- Defamation whereby the business creates libel statements against the client
- Breach of copyright whereby the services delivered infringe copyright and fair use laws
- Lost or damaged documentation that occurs while such are in your possession for the job
- Employee cover due to employees’ activities resulting in losses financially for the client
- Breach of confidence whereby your business shares sensitive personal information without written permission from the client
These are just a few examples of what PI insurance policies may be able to cover. As a result of this, it is always worthwhile to consider how your own business could benefit from having PI insurance in place.
Does my Business Need Professional Indemnity Insurance?
So, does your business need professional indemnity insurance cover? Well, on the whole, PI insurance is not a legal requirement for your business to hold. To this end, your business should carefully consider whether this insurance solution might be a valuable addition to your existing insurance policies.
Although professional indemnity insurance cover isn’t usually a requirement, there are a few notable exceptions to this rule. The first of these is for certain fields of work, such as financial advisors, lawyers, and the like; the law often requires that these individuals hold PI insurance for their and their clients’ protection. Furthermore, some business contracts may also require that the service provider holds professional indemnity insurance. Make sure to check your business contracts carefully to determine whether this is the case for your agreement.
The level of coverage for PI insurance policies will vary, and most commonly, the insurer will offer coverage based on the value of the work undertaken. For example, if you valued a graphic design job for a company’s logo creation and branding at £500, this would often influence the level of cover. In contrast, if you offered full website development and management services for £2000, the level of cover you receive for this project would likely be higher.
Though it varies from firm to firm, insurers will usually value PI insurance policies up to £5 million in coverage. However, as previously mentioned, this will depend on the nature of the work being done. Nonetheless, this level of protection could be the difference between your business remaining financially secure or not; therefore, it’s integral that you consider carefully whether your business could afford the potential financial ramifications of a lawsuit for poor quality work.
Thus far, we have clarified that professional indemnity insurance can offer a host of benefits for your business. However, you might be wondering now how much these insurance policies cost. Indeed, before you take out any coverage, it can be valuable to check whether your business would be able to afford the potential associated expenses or not.
Of course, the price of professional indemnity insurance will vary from insurer to insurer. Moreover, the price that you can expect to pay for PI cover will also be dependant on the level of financial coverage you need, any additional extras you have added to the policy (such as legal expenses or equipment) and the like.
A rough figure for professional indemnity insurance will usually fall between £300 and £1000 annually for up to £1 million in coverage. Alternatively, for the highest level of protection of up to £5 million, you may be looking at a higher annual price tag for these insurance services of between £700 and £1500. Alternatively, if you only need a small amount of cover for your work (for example, you offer lower-rated services), you could even find policies starting from as little as a few hundred dollars per year.
Evidently, this could be a significant cost saving compared to the potential fees associated with a legal case. However, the price that you will be charged for professional indemnity insurance cover will again vary from insurer to insurer. As such, we highly recommend you get in touch with some reputable PI insurers to find out more about quotes for your business to get a more accurate insight into the level of protection you need and how much this will likely cost.
How to Stay Safe When Providing Services for Clients
At this point, we should clarify that professional indemnity insurance cover should only be a worst-case scenario. Indeed, as a services provider, you should strive to offer top-class services for every client, without compromise. Ensuring that all deliverables are accurate is crucial to avoid potential risks associated with court cases and the like.
To this end, even if you have professional indemnity insurance cover in place to protect your business, you should still strive to avoid complications by following the points below:
- Always ensure work is grammatically and factually accurate before delivering it to the client. This dedication is crucial, as one of the key causes of cases is for professional negligence.
- Never share any of your clients’ personal or sensitive data. If you are unsure about whether data is sensitive or not, don’t leave things to chance; contact the client by writing to get written permission to share the details. Always seek written permission to use as evidence, just in case you need to; permission given by telephone call alone isn’t enough!
- Follow all copyright laws carefully to ensure your work doesn’t cause the client to be in breach of copyright laws and legislation. Breaching copyright laws can be a serious offence, and these cases may result in severe financial losses for your client.
- Take care to ensure that all work you provide cannot be deemed offensive or discriminatory in any way. If the work was this way, this could incur significant reputational losses for your client, which in turn could result in a legal case against your business.
The above are just a few tips to ensure your business remains safe. After all, no one wants to go through a court case, even if your firm has protection from a professional indemnity insurance policy.
Where to Find Reliable Professional Indemnity Insurance Policies
At this point, we’ve covered the different aspects relating to professional indemnity insurance. However, it’s crucial that we also consider where you can find the best professional indemnity insurance policies. After all, not every insurer will offer the same standard of support for your insurance needs.
As such, before taking out any insurance policies, always ensure you have done your research. This will help you choose a policy that will provide you with genuinely valuable coverage and protection. Some such points that you should consider for selecting a PI insurance provider include:
- Ideally, you should choose a provider that specializes in offering business insurance solutions.
- Consider the insurance provider’s online reputation with past clients – are they honest with making payments, or do they try to avoid paying?
- Always read the terms and conditions of all insurance policy offers thoroughly to look for any potential loopholes or grey areas that the insurer may not cover.
- Always discuss your chosen insurance policy with representatives of the insurer to get a clear picture of what the policy offers and any limitations.
- Check whether your chosen professional indemnity insurance provider offers the right level of coverage on your policy.
- Always consider the prices your chosen insurer charges for coverage. As standard, PI policies will vary between £500 and £1500 annually for between £1 million and £5 million in cover.
Of course, these are just a few of the points that you’ll need to cover as part of your PI insurance search. However, this may help you to choose a suitable policy that will provide your business with the protection it needs.
To summarise, there’s no one insurance policy that’s ideal for every business. To this end, your business must consider the different insurance opportunities available to it – and professional indemnity insurance, or PI insurance, is just one type of policy you might want to consider.
Indeed, PI insurance can provide excellent coverage for your services business. And, to this end, it may be worthwhile taking it out to see whether this could offer your firm the utmost level of financial protection.
Indeed, it only takes one little mistake in the delivery to cause reputational or financial damage to your client. Hence, you must have the right policies in place if you provide services for clients to limit the risks of this happening.
Other useful links from our knowledge centre:
Insurance for sole traders
What does SLA mean in business?
Is a charity a business?
Remember to Compare Your Business Costs is here to help your business every step of the way from business advice, or saving you time and money on your business purchases such as:
Ally Cox is a dedicated Copywriter and Blogger for CompareYourBusinessCosts.co.uk. In under two years, the platform achieved the esteemed accolade of ‘Website of the Year’. Since its award-winning debut, Ally has been instrumental in fostering organic growth for the website, expanding its offerings to encompass comparisons across a diverse range of over 20 products to help serve all your business needs.