Traditionally, professional indemnity was thought to really only apply to professionals giving advice such as medical professionals, lawyers and financial advisers. These days, we understand this protection can be relevant to any professional that provides advice or a service to their customers.
Do I need professional indemnity insurance?
Do you give advice in your business? If you do, you may need Professional Indemnity Insurance.
This insurance covers the advice you give your clients. It helps to protect you should your customers make a claim against your business alleging that your specialist services or advice caused them financial loss.
How does professional indemnity insurance work?
You could be a bookkeeper and your client gives you their paperwork. They don’t have it online or copies of it. You lose the paperwork. The cost to replace this would be included under your professional indemnity insurance. It could be electronic data also.
If you are a professional and give advice, however your client feels it wasn’t adequate, or you were misleading. They could sue you, even if it was unfounded. This policy will cover the costs of legal representation and the costs in some cases to settle the claim.
Think of this policy as having your own defence council on retainer.
What it will cover?
On most policies, professional indemnity insurance is designed to cover:
- Negligence
- Intellectual property
- Handling client’s information
- Employee negligence
- Professional duty of care
- Defamation cover
- False claims against you.
This is just a few examples of inclusions. Seek a brokers advice. Contact us if you’d like to talk about your situation or get a free, no-obligation quotation.
General advice warning
The information above may be regarded as general advice. That is, your personal objectives, needs or financial situations were not taken into account when preparing this information.
Accordingly, you should consider the appropriateness of any general advice we have given you, having regard to your own objectives, financial situation and needs before acting on it. Where the information relates to a particular financial product, you should obtain and consider the relevant product disclosure statement before making any decision to purchase that financial product.