Professional indemnity insurance! Who need this?
Professional indemnity insurance is a cover to the policy holder when a claim is brought against him by his/her client due to his negligent service. There are lots of technical deficiencies that cause a customer or a client to use professional indemnity insurance claims. This is happening in every field. Some of the reasons for which claims are made generally include: you don't commit a mistake even then your customer attack you and ask for compensation, a contractor could have really made an error due to which a customers business had gone to the stage of liquidation, loss of documents and data, intellectual property and so on. So, every consultant should have professional indemnity insurance cover to run their profession smoothly.
As a consultant your goal must be to protect your assets. How can you save you from the unexpected claims raised by your client? If your business is at greater risk then you need to have adequate limit of indemnity. Professional indemnity insurance limits should be decided after consulting an agent and depending on the nature of business you do.
Whatever may be your profession on every renewal consider the limit amount and if necessary try to increase the limit. Professional indemnity insurance is a safety tool for professionals like doctors, chartered accountants etc. Since most of the claims in the recent period are more than the indemnity limit having higher indemnity limit is always safe. Because, in case the claim raised by your client is more than the limit, then you have to pay the balance either from your pocket or selling your asset. So, on every renewal think of the risks involved in your profession and increase the limit. Professional indemnity insurance with higher limit is necessary for consultants whose turnover is more.
Professional indemnity insurance is necessary for the professionals who offer opinion or advice to their customers. Certain professionals like doctors, advocates, financial consultants, IT industry etc. should purchase professional indemnity insurance as they deal with lot of clients.
Even though you have professional indemnity insurance on your hand, always try to minimize the errors. Good communication is necessary than offering services. Lack of communication irritates a client to initiate indemnity claims. If required you can go one step beyond that and call for a discussion with your client as disputes may occur even through others in your team. You can avoid spurious allegations by this way. Still your client is not satisfied and goes for claim, and then you can use the professional indemnity insurance and settle the matter.
Professional indemnity insurance cover differs for each and every business. You can fix the limit depending on the nature of your business. The advantage professional indemnity insurance is that your legal fees will also be covered under the policy. Anyway before taking the professional indemnity insurance policy consult any of the reputed agents or refer websites to know how much cover your profession need.