How much does Professional indemnity insurance cost?

What does it cost?

In the current professional indemnity market costs are very difficult to predict and this is likely to continue.  Some online firms offer very low premiums but then their scope of policy wording and cover are very limited and there are often service issues if the insured has problems through their policy period.

If your occupation range falls in to one of our specialist schemes, Health & Safety, Principal Designers / CDM Advisors, Training Consultants, then our premiums are considerably more competitive than the open market – see the examples below.

Good Professional Indemnity Insurance is by its nature not cheap.  If a professional gets things wrong, it usually costs a lot to put things right.

We tend to look at three basic types risk and then use the common sense approach for you to see which one you fall into.  In the end all costs are relative to the size, occupation, experience and claims history of any one client.

Level One

Low risk, low frequency.  Some areas of work are not as exposed as others

Level Two

Medium risk, medium cost of claim.  Some work areas are known to have regular claims

Level Three

High Cost rare but expensive.  A claim may happen very rarely but when it does – wow.

Underwriters have over a period of time built up actuarial profiles of various types of work area and have a good idea of the likelihood of claims and costs

The cost of insurance depends on which area you fall into, the size of your company, details of how you may control your business so that the possibility of a claim is minimised, how experienced your are, what level of cover your want and how big an excess you are happy to take.  When we are asked to get terms for an insured we ask all of these questions in a questionnaire or proposal form.  Once we have all of these details we go to underwriters who then assess the risk and allocate terms.

As a very very rough guide the minimum costs per sector are laid out below, these do not constitute quotes or terms but are meant as a rough guide if you are simply interested in very approximate costs before approaching us to send you a proposal form and then getting firm terms.

 

Risk Level Policy Limit Usual Excess  Minimum Cost
 

ONE – Low loss
frequency

 

£250,000
£500,000
£1,000,000

 

£250
£250
£250

 

£110
£150
£200

 

TWO – Medium loss
frequency

 

£250,000
£500,000
£1,000,000

 

£500
£500
£500

 

£250
£375
£500

 

THREE – Steady loss
frequency

 

£250,000
£500,000
£1,000,000

 

£750
£1,000
£1,250

 

£500
£750
£1,000