Professional Indemnity Insurance
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Professional Indemnity – When advice goes wrong!
Professional Indemnity insurance will cover expenses incurred in your defence if you are alleged to have provided inadequate advice, services, design or specification resulting in your client suffering as a result.
Who requires Professional Indemnity Insurance?
Historically various professions have required this insurance to meet their body’s regulatory requirements.
With increasing litigation, even if you are not obliged to have this insurance, without it you could be found liable for legal costs and compensation payments should your customer feel you have provided inadequate advice.
Claims can be time consuming and can result in lost revenue to the business, so we would recommend companies to have Professional Indemnity insurance if:
- You are providing a professional service and advice to your customers e.g., consulting or contracting / specification.
- Your work as a consultant or contractor requires you to have Professional Indemnity insurance to undertake a contract.
- You provide design / specification and feasibility studies to your clients. This is not limited to architects but includes engineers, IT professionals and companies across a variety of sectors.
- You wish to protect yourself against allegations of wrongful advice for work you have undertaken for a client.
- Your industry association / regulatory body requires you have Professional Indemnity.
What Does “Claims Made” Mean?
Professional Indemnity insurance is a “claims made” policy and provides cover for claims which are made and notified to insurers during the current policy period.
In contrast to this, other insurances are on a “claims occurring” basis which provides cover for claims during that policy period.
If a Professional Indemnity insurance policy is therefore not renewed or cancelled, this would end coverage and the policyholder would not be covered should an allegation of wrongful advice have occurred during the policy period. It is important to continue Professional Indemnity insurance cover beyond the end of a contract for a suitable period in case an incident comes to light at a time in the future beyond the policy term.
Similarly, if the business ceases trading, “run-off” cover is strongly recommended to continue to provide Professional Indemnity cover for a period of time to fund any defence of a claim that could arise.
Claims Examples
No matter how careful you are and how confident you are of your own abilities or service, any company could be faced with a claim for alleged wrongful work:
- A business consultant could accidentally reveal sensitive information about a client in an email to the wrong person.
- An IT consultant might wrongfully specify a computer system.
- A printer realises there is a spelling mistake when brochures are printed for a client. A Professional Indemnity policy would cover the reprinting costs.
- Unintentionally producing material that infringes Intellectual Property Rights, for example, using on-line images without the owner’s permission can lead to legal costs and compensation.
To find out more and to discuss your needs, please contact us on 01274 515 747 or email us at mail@lwood.co.uk
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