Do I need professional indemnity insurance?

You may decide you need professional indemnity insurance if your business gives advice, offers a professional service, or handles client data or intellectual property. Some professional bodies and regulators require that their members hold professional indemnity insurance.

Who needs professional indemnity insurance?

When you’re deciding whether your business needs professional indemnity insurance, first check whether your regulator or professional body requires you to hold a policy. If you work in accountancy, architecture or chartered surveying, it’s likely that you’re obliged to have professional indemnity insurance.

You may also find that your client contracts require you to have a particular level of professional indemnity insurance.

Even if this isn’t the case, it’s quite likely that you will still decide that your business needs professional indemnity cover, both to reassure potential clients and for your own security.

It’s a particularly popular insurance for businesses that give advice, provide a professional service, or handle client data and intellectual property. This is because it can pay claims made against you for financial loss suffered by a client, perhaps because you’ve mishandled data or you’ve given the wrong advice. As a result, it’s bought by many business types, from IT consultants to designers to accountants.

Why is professional indemnity insurance important?

In the following interview with Robert Hartley (ACII), we discuss the importance of professional indemnity insurance and the value it can have for your business. Although PI cover is not compulsory by law, it is required by certain regulatory bodies and often indispensable for professionals such as solicitors, accountants and architects.

Popular trades we insure

At Simply Business we insure all kinds of trades like:

Is your profession not listed? When you run a quote you can select your trade from over 1,000 options.

Ready to set up your professional indemnity cover?

With more than 800,000 business insurance policies in our care, professional indemnity insurance is one of our most popular covers.