What is Professional Indemnity Insurance?

Professional Indemnity Insurance is written on a ‘Claims Made’ basis. Please see our FAQs for a definition of ‘Claims Made’.

Our Professional Indemnity Policy Wordings vary depending on the nature of the company's business. 

If your company operates within the IT sector, please click here to view the Policy Wording.

If your company operates within the Engineering, Oil and Gas or Aviation sectors, please click here to view the Policy Wording.

If your company operates within the Admin, Secretarial and Languages, Forensic Practitioners and Experts, Management Consultancy, Media, Publishing and Design or Marketing sectors, please click here to view the Policy Wording.

If you already have a policy with us and would like to view the Professional Indemnity Policy Wording, please refer to your Policy Schedule and match the technical name to one of the below:

6627 WD-PIP-UK-TEC (1)

5997 WD-PIP-UK-SP1 (2)

5998 WD-PIP-UK-SP (4)

Similarly, if you would like us to send you a copy of any policy documents please let us know and we will do so.

Get a Professional Indemnity Insurance Quote

What is Public and Product Liability Insurance?

Product and Public Liability Insurance would indemnify the company against their legal liability as a result of death of, or bodily injury to, third parties or damage to their property arising out of the course of your business.

The standard cover provided is Worldwide excluding USA / Canada. If you would like to extend the policy to cover work carried out in the USA / Canada or under USA / Canada jurisdiction, please choose the bespoke policy options to request this extension.

For more information on our Public Libaility Insurance and Product Liability Insurance policy, please click here to review the Policy Wording.

Get a Product and Public Liability Insurance Quote

Professional indemnity business insurance protects you for sums you may have to pay as compensation to your clients because of problems with your work. The following are legal names given to the most common claims:

• Negligence: failing in your 'duty of care' to your client – perhaps giving incorrect advice or making a mistake in your work
• Intellectual property: infringing copyrights, trademarks or broadcasting rights. Includes any imitation or passing your product/service off as another’s
• Loss of professional documents/data: includes damaged, missing or stolen software belonging to a client or business
• Dishonesty: perhaps the most damaging claim a company has to face, such as an employee stealing money

Professional indemnity insurance will offer cover for compensation you may need to pay to correct a mistake or cover any legal costs if a client claims bad service or advice. It can also cover your defence bills or any subsequent damages awarded.

If you need to claim, let us or Hiscox know as soon as possible. Prompt action could minimise the problem, or avoid unnecessary cost and distress. 

Other benefits include:

• Access to Hiscox professional, experienced and customer focused claims team
• Interest-free Direct Debit payments

Insurance Premium Tax is a tax that's added to all general insurance premiums, where cover is UK based. Just as you pay VAT on regular goods, you pay Insurance Premium Tax on insurance. 

Please note that with effect from 1st June 2017, IPT will increase from 10% to 12%.

For more information please contact us on 020 7929 5454. 

‘Offshore’ means from the time an Employee of the insured company embarks onto a conveyance at the point of final departure to an Offshore rig platform or support vessel until the Employee disembarks onto land upon their return from an Offshore rig platform or support vessel.

Please note that this extension to the policy is intended only to cover the principle director/employee of the company with no other employees undertaking any work offshore. If you do require cover for additional Employees, please contact us to discuss your requirements.

Office equipment such as computers and office furniture can be expensive and difficult to replace, so adding office cover to your Insurance policy can give peace of mind that your office equipment is protected. 

Please note that unless otherwise endorsed your home owners policy will not cover office equipment and/or computers owned by the company.  It is more cost effective to purchase this type of insurance via your company than to endorse it onto your personal home insurance.

Please also note – Office Contents cover has an excess of £150, the cover is UK only and can only be purchased in conjunction with Professional Indemnity Insurance.

This insurance offers cover for financial loss as a result of a business interruption normally arising from a physical loss or damage to property. If you were unable to operate from your work premises Business Interruption will help you get up and running somewhere else.

Business Interruption must be bought in conjunction with either Office Contents or Portable Equipment cover and cannot be sold separately.

If cover is required above £2,500 please choose the bespoke policy options to request this.

Please note – Business Interruption cover has an excess of £0 and can only be purchased in conjunction with Professional Indemnity Insurance and Office / Portable Equipment Insurance.

Prompt action could minimise the problem, or avoid unnecessary cost and distress, meaning you should notify us as soon as you realise that a claim may be heading your way. It’s also a standard condition of all professional indemnity policies. In fact, insurers may reject a claim if they feel it could have been avoided, or at least made less damaging, by early notification.

For these reasons, let us know if you receive a complaint from a client or realise you have slipped up somewhere and can’t easily resolve the problem. Or if you receive a series of escalating complaints on a project. Or if a client withholds payment to you after a complaint. Or if you become aware of a shortcoming in your work that you can’t easily put right.

For all claims in the first instance please contact us at the address below;

• 37-39 Lime Street, London, EC3M 7AY
• 020 7929 5454

The Hiscox claims office is open 9.00 - 5.30 Monday to Friday excluding bank holidays.

Contact the Hiscox claims department on 01206 77 3776 or hicliability.claims@hiscox.com

The out of hours contact telephone number is 0800 751 3639.

For insurance policies we divide claims into two categories; first, “Claims Made” policies and second, “Occurrence Based” policies as outlined below:
 
1) Claims Made Policies

It could be suggested that a Claims made Policy is a policy running in the present which pays out for claims relating to events which took place in the past!
To explain this, this is a policy, currently open, which responds to a claim against it at the time that the claim is made, regardless of when the event causing the claim took place.
So, if an event took place on 14th July 1998 which gave rise to a claim against a Claims Made Policy then to be of value that Policy must be in existence at the time the claim is made.
The sole limitation to this is that there frequently exists a Retro-active Date of Inception (RDI), which limits the earliest an insured event can have taken place.
(See NB below)

2) Occurrence Based Policies

By comparison to the above, an Occurrence based Policy could be a policy running in the past which responds to an event that took place in the past (during the period that the Policy was open).
In other words, if an event took place on 14th July 1998, which resulted in a claim in August 2005 then if the policy responding is an Occurrence based Policy then to be of value, that policy must have been in existence on 14th July 1998.
In the context of these notes, Professional Indemnity Policies are “Claims Made” policies and Employers’ Liability and Public Liability policies are “Occurrence Based” policies.

NB: RDI; the use of the word “inception” in insurance terms describes the first date on which the Policy is valid; the start date. Because of the nature of (in particular) Claims Made Policies, it is common practice for Insurance Companies to allow an RDI reflecting the origination of a continuous coverage. So, if a Company took its’ first coverage in June 1994 and maintained coverage until today, then a Policy incepting in June 2007 would (should) have an RDI of June 1994. In this event, the June 2007 Policy would protect the Insured against claims made now concerning an event which took place at any time after June 1994 (the RDI).

• negligence; where you have failed in your duty of care to a client, perhaps giving incorrect advice or making a mistake in your work
• criminal defence costs relating to any regulation or statute which applies to your business, such as the CONDAM regulations.
• disputes caused by your breach of a duty of care.
• client documents or data that are lost, stolen or damaged in your care.

• Unintentional breach of a written contract to supply software or hardware. Breach of contract is one of the most common insurance claims in the IT industry. Such breaches are covered as standard under the Professional Indemnity policy that we offer.
• Errors occurring in the supply and installation of certain 'deliverables' like software or hardware.
• Negligence, where you have failed in your duty of care to a client, perhaps giving incorrect advice or making a mistake in your work.
• Infringement of intellectual property rights like copyright or trademark.

• Negligence; where you have failed in your duty of care to a client, perhaps giving incorrect advice or making a mistake in your work.
• Infringement of intellectual property rights, such as copyright or trademark.
• The cost of restoring or replacing business documents or data if you have lost, destroyed or damaged them.

• Negligence; where you have failed in your duty of care to a client, perhaps giving incorrect advice or making a mistake in your work.
• Criminal defence costs relating to any regulation or statute which applies to your business
• Disputes caused by your breach of a duty of care.
• Client documents that are lost, stolen or damaged in your care, including data.