How Can Professional Indemnity Insurance Help You Predict The Future?

 

If you’re a business owner, freelancer or contractor, you might think you don’t need professional indemnity insurance. Perhaps you think that if you’re careful, you won’t find yourself dealing with any problems. However, it is worth considering what happens if your predictions are wrong and you stumble into some unfortunate circumstances. Taking out professional indemnity insurance can make you more aware of the situations that can occur, and how your insurance can protect you. Staying informed about how to prevent certain situations from happening is important, and there are several ways that professional indemnity insurance can help you.

Negligence and Dishonesty

One of the ways professional indemnity insurance can protect you is if someone accuses you of negligence or dishonesty. They might say that you gave them bad advice, didn’t do what you promised or even lied to them. Of course, to help prevent this from happening, you need to ensure you conduct your business honestly and do your best to provide a valuable service for your clients. However, it’s possible to make mistakes, even when doing your best. This is where your professional indemnity insurance comes into play.

Defamation

Defamation includes libel and slander. This occurs when an individual or an organisation feel damaged by something you have said or written. There can sometimes be a fine line between giving your opinion and making unfair statements about someone. The best way to prevent this is to be careful about what you say, and ideally, stick to dealing in facts. In the event that you do end up dealing with an accusation of defamation, professional indemnity insurance can protect you.

Intellectual Property Infringement

Producing original work is essential when running an ethical business. However, there are occasions when you or an employee could accidentally infringe upon someone else’s intellectual property. You might see this kind of case play out a lot when a large business challenges the right of a smaller business to use a name like theirs. Doing the proper checks for patents, trademarks and other register intellectual property is important. You should also use tools to check for plagiarism in written text.

Data Security and Privacy

Protecting personal information has been a particularly prominent topic with the recent introduction of the GDPR. It’s essential to make sure you handle client data properly and take steps to protect it, such as maintaining rigorous IT security. Unfortunately, even when you do protect the data you hold, you could still fall victim to data loss or hacking. Being properly insured will help to protect you.

Expense Claims

If someone does happen to make a legal claim against you, you could also be responsible for their legal fees, as well as paying a settlement. Professional indemnity insurance is designed to protect you from this. If you want to try and make sure it never reaches that stage, you need to do your best to conduct your business ethically.

Professional indemnity insurance gives you better insight into what could go wrong in the future. You can’t avoid all possibilities of something happening, so it’s best to always protect your business. You can find out more about professional indemnity insurance and get a quote here.

If you need help and support in getting your insurance please contact us at info@tapoly.com