At 13:55 +1200 1/5/07, Alan Litchfield wrote: >I have both general business insurance with large public liability cover and >where necessary I get professional indemnity insurance. The professional >indemnity insurance is the one that is really expensive.
In the UK I have found that it can be, but does not have to be. You have to shop around and make sure that you are dealing with a company that really understands the risks, or lack of them, that they are being asked to underwrite. This pretty much means that you should be dealing with a specialist insurer. >I only bother with it on specific jobs, otherwise I ensure that processes are >in place where the liability/accountability is held by the client. I have not heard of job-specific insurance here, but I would be very cautious about such packages due to issues of retrospective liability. A 'failure' covered by a PI package could arise even years after the relevant documentation or software was created. >When I have professional indemnity insurance the cover is only for the >specific job and is always a hassle to get sorted. Here software contractors and allied trades such as tech communicators can get cover from as little as ?150 pa. It was not always so, though, as I pointed out to Pat off-list: a decade ago when I first went out for PI cover, I was quoted from less than ?500 pa. to over ?3500 pa. for essentially the same thing. Whether you *need* PI cover is another issue, and is heavily dependent on how you trade and your national laws. -- Steve
