Professional Indemnity Insurance: Yes, Freelancers Do Need It

Some people still think that professional indemnity insurance is a rather obscure type of policy that only applies to doctors and lawyers and maybe accountants. Certainly not something that anyone who proudly calls himself or herself a freelancer needs to worry about.

Some people are wrong. Very wrong.

The whole world of work has been changing in recent years. More and more organizations are putting more and more work out to independent suppliers. And guess what? More and more independent suppliers, freelancers, are getting sued when something goes wrong.

And whilst being sued is never fun, being sued when you don’t have professional indemnity cover can easily turn out to be nothing short of a personal disaster. No exaggeration. So before you dismiss professional indemnity, or pi insurance, as something that doesn’t apply to you, think about this...

There may be lots of advantages to working freelance. But there’s one big downside. There’s nowhere to hide if you make a mistake. If employees get it wrong, they may get shouted at, they may get marked down in their next assessment, they may even get fired. Freelancers, on the other hand, can be held fully liable for the full extent of any financial loss the client suffers.

And that can amount to thousands of pounds (a client loses sales because a Graphic Designer puts the wrong contact details in an advertisement). Tens of thousands of pounds (an entire departmental work schedule is disrupted because an IT Consultant misjudges the user requirements.) Even millions of pounds (a major infrastructure project is delayed, with all the knock-on costs, because a Structural Engineer makes a critical miscalculation.)

Yes, you really do need professional indemnity cover. And you can get a highly competitive professional indemnity quote right here.