What is Professional Indemnity Insurance?

If you are in business in Ireland and provide a professional service to a client, then you should consider protecting against the risk of making a mistake.

It doesn't matter whether your business is a SME or a medium to large enterprise in Ireland. Mistakes happen, but they needn't cost you your business.

Professional Indemnity Insurance is designed to cover you in the event of you ( or one of your employees) making a mistake which causes your client to sue you.

It provides for the legal costs and expenses involved in defending the claim.

It also covers the cost of compensating the client for the financial loss incurred as a result of negligence.

This can amount to a very substantial sum, depending on the nature of the negligence and the financial impact which it has on the client.

Even where you are found to be not guilty of negligence, the cost of successfully defending a claim can be very expensive.

Knowing that there is a suitable Professional Indemnity Insurance policy in place, which gives proper protection, will certainly help you to sleep a lot easier at night.

What type of risk does professional indemnity cover?

We all work to avoid mistakes, but no one is perfect, and they can happen.

The following is a short list of typical areas where professional indemnity insurance has come to the rescue.

• Professional negligence, where you get it wrong and if there was not insurance in place, you would have to pay from your own resources.

• Defamation. This is not as obvious. Many people overlook this. The laws of defamation are quite strict in Ireland. This is a good thing if your reputation is being defamed. Defamation can often occur in an unintentional way. You may refer to a company or individual in a manner which may be interpreted by the courts as constituting defamation.

• Breach of confidentiality. With so much information being stored and accessed, even with a strong procedure in place, this can occur. When it does, it's good to know that you are covered.

• Breach of copyright. This can be very expensive to defend. Companies can be very agressive in protecting their copyright. You need to know that you are indemnified if a breach occurs.

• Loss of data. This can be in digital or written format. Perhaps a computer becomes damaged and data is lost, with no back up. The only copy of a valuable report gets destroyed while in your care. This also applies to loss of goods or money in your control.

Should I get Professional Indemnity Insurance if it is not mandatory ?

PI (Professional Indemnity Insurance) is mandatory for many professions in Ireland, including, Solicitors, accountants,financial advisors, architects.

Other professions may need to have it in place in order to secure, or tender for contracts. These include, IT consultants, business and management consultants, researchers, economists.

You should have insurance in place to protect you against the risk of being sued. Even if you can afford to pay the compensation, and the legal costs and expenses and the loss of time, it makes economic sense to spread the risk to an insurance provider.

For a relatively small outlay, you can get cover amounting to millions of euro.

What is the value of comparing the market for professional indemnity insurance in Ireland?

You need to know that you are getting value for money. We deal with a wide range of insurance providers and our qualified advisors will search the market for your best policy.

Request a quote today and one of our experts will contact you to discuss your individual needs and circumstances. Armed with that information they will then use their skills and experience to obtain great value quotes. We will then contact you to explain the value of the quote and you choose the one which suits you best, with our help.

What should I do next?

Click on the quote button and one of our experts will contact you to start finding your best policy.