OT: Business insurance for independent contractors

[Steve Rickaby]

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