professional indemnity insurance

Hi trickylittleimp

There are two sides to professional indeminity insurance:

1. It protects you from financial loss through litigation as a result of your error.

or

2. It encourages people to sue you because they know they can get a fat payout from your insurer, rather than just a few thousand quid from you on your own.

My view is that if you're in an industry where it isn't a requirement of being allowed to practice, and if nobody is likely to die as a result of your mistake, then it's not really worth bothering with.

I'd think you're fairly unlikely to be sued in the communications sector. PR companies don't generally have professional indemnity insurance, advertising agencies don't and so on.

By the way, if this advice ever turns out to be wrong it's really not worth suing me, as I don't have professional indemnity insurance. :)

cheers
steve

Steve Parks
Pilot, FlyingStartUps.com

I looked at this for my Simply Slimming site and found it impossible to find an insurer because I was not in a straight-forward category anyone covered. My answer was to become a limited company and have some reasonable disclaimers on my site and sign up process.

Also got membership of the Chamber of Commerce for free legal insurance should any case come up.

Janice
http://www.SimplySlimming.com

Thanks, Steve and Janice - both very helpful; I'm in political strategy, which is related to management consultancy as well as PR: it's a tricky one, but I like the idea of disclaimers & the Chamber - cheers, both of you!
Gill

Hi all
I am a new member, just signd up after feeling inspired by 'Start Your Business Week by Week' (which is fantastic!)
I am about to set up a small Recruitment Consultancy, and although you wouldnt typically expect that insurance would be needed, as an accounting friend of mine pointed out, what if I help a company to find, for example a Finance Officer and that person hs a hidden history of embezzelment, and they defraud the company of £50k in the 1st week - I would say I would have one angry client on my hnd.
I have written disclaimers into my terms of business but considering this, I now think I should get insiured.

Does anyone have any opinions on this? Also, any links to potential insurers, as I cannot seem to locate one for this area of business.

Thanks

Elaine

www.recruitnorthwest.co.uk

im looking into getting this sorted right now so good to see this post,

as a contact planning engineer i work in all sorts of field from telecoms, rail, power gen, manufacturing and it is a requirement of my contract that i provide adequate insurance if something goes wrong - i have heard of a case of a company suing a contractor (who they pay a lot to do a job) because they got it really wrong and cost them a fortune in project delay fees so for a few hundred pounds a year it could be worth it many times over!!!

check your contract to see what it says

i tried www.simplybusiness.co.uk for a quote who search several leading companies ( a bit like confused.com) but they do ring you to follow up if you just get a quote you have been warned!

Dave

hello,

you could also try Towergate Professional Indemnity insurance at towergate.co.uk they specialise in the above or should know a man that can.

Hope this of some help.