GENERAL INSURANCE – PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

PROFESSIONAL INDEMNITY INSURANCE

Professional Indemnity insurance is designed for professionals who provide a specialist service or advice, providing protection for financial loss and legal costs in the event of a claim. This claim may be a result of an actual or alleged negligent act, error or omission whilst providing your professional service or advice.

If someone alleges that you’ve made a mistake, overlooked a critical piece of information, misstated a fact or they have misinterpreted you in the course of your work, and this results in a financial loss for your client, then they may take legal action against you to recover these losses.

Professional Indemnity claims can arise from simple things like:

• Giving incorrect advice
• Faulty designs
• A miscalculation
• Incorrect diagnosis or treatment
• An act, omission or breach of duty
• Engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct
• Loss of documentation
• Inadvertently defaming someone
• Failing to meet a deadline
• Not meeting your clients expectations

Professional Indemnity insurance is designed to protect the assets and reputation of your business in the event of a claim.

 

PUBLIC LIABILITY (ALSO KNOWN AS BROADFORM LIABILITY)

Public Liability insurance is one of the most common types of business insurances that a variety of different businesses choose to take out. It is there to provide protection if someone makes a claim against You, the business or its employees when damage to third-party property or personal injury has been caused by your business activities.

CYBER CRIME AND CYBER LIABILITY

This type of insurance is equally important to you as it will be to your customer. A business insurance policy doesn’t cover loss or damage arising from Viruses, Trojans, Hacking, Ransomware or most other cyber crimes. That’s where a Cyber Crime and Cyber Liability policy comes in.

A Cyber Crime policy generally has three parts.

1. Cyber Crime cover for your Assets.

This part of the policy responds to the damage to hardware or software assets as the result of a cyber breach. Whether this is the costs of unlocking or replacing a machine locked by cryptolocker, regaining access to your website after it is hacked, or locking and recovering data from hardware that has been stolen or lost.

2. Loss of Income following cyber crime.

The loss of income section of a Cyber policy is as the name suggests. The consequential loss of income or extra costs incurred by a business following that Cyber Breach. This extra cover is not typically included when you take a “Cyber Extension” within your Professional Indemnity Cover or Management Liability cover. It is only available with selected insurers.

This cover is however one of the most important inclusions for any business that runs an online store to protect their revenue generated by their online store, it really is like a business insurance for online shops or online stores to protect the asset and the consequential loss of income.

3. Cyber Liability

A cyber breach into any network usually involves a breach of data or a loss of data. If this data belongs to someone else, such as a customer of yours, it can result in you being liable for whatever costs are incurred by that customer as a result of that breach.

In Australia we also have strict privacy laws that extend to customer data. A breach of customers data can also result in fines or penalties. This is another reason to take the Cyber Liability cover as part of your Cyber Insurance protection.

Your coverage may generally include cover for expenses and restoration costs relating to the following:

• Data breaches including theft or loss of client information
• Network security breaches
• Business interruption/Consequential Loss costs
• Forensic investigation into the cause or scope of a breach
• Data recovery costs
• Cyber extortion
• Crisis management costs (to protect or mitigate damage to your businesses reputation resulting from a cyber event)
• Loss and legal costs, including fines and penalties resulting from a third party claim for data or network security breach against your company

BUSINESS INSURANCE FOR YOUR OFFICE

A business insurance package is required to supplement the IT package for most business operators. The IT Insurance package doesn’t cover any of your equipment, stock, or your customers goods for damage through fire, storm, malicious damage or theft.

For smaller contractors working from home, it will be important for you to check with your home insurer to let them know that you are running a business from home and to see whether that policy will cover equipment owned by you or stock that you have at your home. In most cases the policy will only provide very limited cover and often will not cover any loss of income to your business as a result of damage or theft at your home.

The loss of income cover within a business package is often overlooked by IT professionals who see themselves as not restricted to a particular business premise, but, what if there is a short term restriction whereby homes and businesses were without power in significant regions.

Can you operate your business without power or would it result in lost income and potentially lost customers if you cannot respond to their needs during that time?

COMMERCIAL MOTOR VEHICLE

We understand the importance of making sure you have the right cover for your commercial motor vehicles in place be it sedans, vans or utes used within your operation.

Commercial motor vehicle insurance helps protect your vehicles from accidental theft to damage and has been designed with the common risk exposures of commercial drivers in mind.

We highly recommend business owners consider the benefits of arranging commercial vehicle insurance if they use their cars, trucks and trailers for business purposes.

CONTRACTUAL LIABILITY

Whilst incidental contractual liability insurance may be insured by some liability insurance policies, it often excludes liability that would not have existed without the contract. This exclusion of the included cover generally will make most policies not actually cover any contractual liabilities arising from any contract that you enter into with customers or suppliers.

MANAGEMENT LIABILITY INSURANCE

As the director of a company, you can be held personally liable for decisions you or your staff make on your behalf in the running of your business. These decisions may result in an alleged breach of employment law (harassment, discrimination, bullying, unfair dismissal), trade practices act, environmental protection, or workplace health & safety laws.

A director’s liability or management liability insurance policy generally protects the company and any innocent parties by paying for defence cover to defend against such allegations against you as a director and / or the business entity for misconduct.