Professional Indemnity Insurance

If you provide a professional service or advice, then you may wish to consider Professional Indemnity insurance. Some of these traditional occupations include accountants, architects, engineers, allied health professionals and many more.

No matter how long you’ve been in business for, mistakes can happen. Professional Indemnity claims can arise from simple things like:

• Giving incorrect advice
• 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 not always a mandatory requirement. However, for some professions it is a legal requirement or a mandatory requirement as part of the professional licence or membership to the relevant industry association. It can also be a contractual requirement. It is always best to check with your relevant industry body if it is a legal requirement and if a minimum level of cover is required.

Depending on the Professional Indemnity policy selected, your policy could cover you for liabilities arising from, but not limited to, non-intentional or non- deliberate professional misconduct such as:

• Providing your client with misleading or negligent advice
• Breaching your professional duty
• Confidentiality and other privacy breaches
• Defamation, libel or slander
• Loss of or damage to documents
• Infringement of intellectual property
• Payment of compensation as a result of a claim, including but not limited to Court awarded damages
• An award of legal costs against you
• Reasonable legal costs incurred in defending or responding to the claim
• Claim investigation costs
• Disciplinary proceeding costs
• Depending on the type of Professional Indemnity insurance policy you have, it may extend to provide cover for public relation costs to help protect your business’ reputation.

For allied health professionals your Professional Indemnity insurance policy extends to provide cover for bodily injury or illness claims arising from the professional services covered by the policy.

Your Professional Indemnity cover is there to help protect you from certain claims. Some of the things that your policy will typically not cover you from include:

• Intentional damage or misconduct
• Contractual liabilities
• Professional fees refunds
• Known claims and circumstances that may have occurred prior to the period of insurance 
• Acts of fraud and dishonesty
• Accidental injury and property damage ( these kind of claims would typically be covered by Public Liability insurance).

While both types of policies are there to protect your business against third-party claims that may occur from your business activities, they cover very different liabilities.

Public Liability insurance protects your business if a customer, supplier or member of the public are injured or sustain property damage as a result of your negligent business activities. It also assists with the legal costs associated with managing claims covered by the policy.

Professional Indemnity insurance is designed to respond to claims against your business for losses as a result of actual or alleged negligent acts or omissions in the provision of your professional service or advice. 

Management Liability insurance protects directors and officers and the insured company itself from the many exposures relating to the management of a company. Owners and those responsible for the management of a company have specific responsibilities which can result in personal liability for alleged or actual wrongdoing.

Management Liability is often offered as a packaged product including Directors and Officers Liability, Corporate Liability, Employment Practice Liability, Crime and Statutory Liability.

Professional Indemnity protects you against losses claimed by a third party due to alleged or actual negligence or errors in your professional services or advice.  Your Professional Indemnity insurance will meet the associated compensation payable to a third party together with your defence costs (which can include legal costs, investigator costs and expert fees).

When it comes to making a claim on your insurance, we understand that it can be a difficult time and that’s why we want to make it as stress-free as possible. To help guide you through, we’ve created a simple outline of the claims process.

1. Start the claims process by downloading and completing our claims form.
2. Please email the completed form to our friendly claims team at claims@bizcover.com.au.
3. We process all our claims online so you can lodge it anytime, 24/7.