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Professional Indemnity Insurance


Do I need it?
Yes - if you offer advice to your customers, or sell your ‘skill’ or ‘knowledge’, this is certainly something you should consider very carefully.

Increasingly, both individuals and organisations are prepared to enter into litigation, and you need to be aware of all the risks and your responsibilities. Being in business is stressful enough, and mistakes do happen, so for a relatively low annual cost you can have complete peace of mind, leaving you to concentrate fully on running your business.

What is it?
Professional indemnity insurance (PI) protects your business against compensation sought by a client if you have made mistakes or are found to have been negligent. PI insurance will also cover any related legal costs.

Most professionals now realise the need to carry professional indemnity cover. If you are a lawyer, accountant or financial adviser, then you must have professional indemnity insurance. But increasingly greater numbers of professionals and business people who offer advice, sell skills or knowledge, opt for peace of mind by taking out such cover as well.

Without professional indemnity insurance, companies run the real risk of being exposed to many liabilities such as:

  • A negligent act or error made during the course of your duties

  • Unintentional infringement of intellectual property rights

  • Loss of data or documents entrusted to you

  • Unintentional breach of confidence

  • Unintentional libel or slander

  • Dishonesty

  • Trademarks infringement

  • Passing off copyright

  • Libel and slander

  • False attribution of authorship

  • Malicious falsehood

  • Downloading of viruses to third parties

  • Breach of confidentiality

  • Intellectual property rights

  • Breach of normal rights and negligent statements


    • Ensure you are properly covered
    One important aspect to bear in mind when considering professional indemnity insurance is that, because there can often be a long delay between an event and a subsequent claim, you need to be covered both at the time of the event and when the claim is made.

    This means that if you plan to cancel your policy when you close your business or retire you may need to arrange ‘run off’ cover for a period of time afterwards.

    Also, if you plan to change insurers, you will either need to arrange ’run off’ cover or obtain agreement from your new insurer to accept new claims for prior incidents.

    What should I do now?
    You need to make sure that you fully understand your responsibilities and how to insure that you are protected against a range of risks and increasingly costly litigation costs.

    Because of our wealth of experience in providing professional indemnity insurance advice to our clients over many years, we are able to offer individually tailored products and services for a range of situations.

    For an informal discussion please call us on 01325 353 888 and we will be happy to discuss this further. Alternatively please email us at webenq@bibinsurance.co.uk