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Both public liability and professional indemnity insurance cover you and your business for different situations. Public liability protects your business if it operates in public, while professional indemnity insurance covers you if you provide a professional service. For lots of businesses, both are essential.
Compare quotes online and see who has a policy that's best suited to you or keep reading to find out more about their differences.
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The main difference between public liability and professional indemnity insurance cover is this:
Protects you if someone (a third-party) is injured or their property is damaged in connection to your business. This type of insurance covers you for damages related to physical surroundings and physical property. For example, if a client falls over and suffers an injury while visiting your business's premises, a public liability insurance policy provides cover for any legal costs or compensation you may be required to pay.
Protects you against claims made by clients if your professional advice or services cause them loss or injury. This can include providing unprofessional advice, failing to exercise required skill or breach of professional duty. None of this is covered by public liability insurance.
Put simply, you need to consider:
To help you decide which type of insurance you need, let's look at two different scenarios involving Jason, who owns his own medical practice.
Jason prescribes the incorrect medicine and is sued for damages.
A client of a patient slips in the bathroom of Jason's practice and sues.
As the name suggests, professional indemnity cover is designed for professionals who offer advice or a service. If you offer professional advice, design, analysis or consultancy, you should consider taking out this type of cover. Architects, designers, real estate agents and PR consultants are some of the professionals who commonly need professional indemnity insurance. However, as the examples above show, many of us can benefit from having both professional indemnity insurance and public liability insurance.
Public liability cover is important for anyone who has customers or members of the public visit their place of business regularly, or if you visit with clients on site and there is a risk of you damaging their property.
We've laid out what both types of insurance cover to help you understand their differences.
| Public liability - what's covered | Professional indemnity insurance - what's covered |
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Determining an adequate level of Public Liability Insurance to take out will depend on a number of factors including:
If your business is such that you never have to visit a client's premises and very few clients actually come to your location, then you can opt for a more basic level of cover.
An insurance broker can help you secure a competitive policy that provides the right level of cover by helping you determine how much cover you actually need and finding an insurer offering suitable cover.
In order to enable you to get the best quote possible you must be able to give the insurer the most accurate information you can, especially regarding the following:
For example, if you run a suburban news agency with only two or three employees your public liability premium will be much lower than a blacksmith with a contract of shoeing horses for a number of leading race horse stables.
Learn more about Public Liability Insurance
In comparison to other types of insurance such as travel or car insurance, it is not really possible to put a clear price tag on professional indemnity insurance as it will really come down to the individual cover requirements of the professional or organisation. Some key factors that will impact the cost and amount of cover required include:
Are you a practising physio or an owner of a clinic? Make sure you have professional indemnity cover.
This guide looks at the exposures travel agents face and how PI Insurance protects them from claims of negligence, error or omission.
Lawyers are often instrumental in pursuing claims for others, but ironically, they too can be sued for breaching their duty of care.
Receive quotes for Professional Indemnity Insurance for Psychologists from Australian Business Insurance providers.
Why do accountants need professional indemnity insurance? Why do they need public liability insurance? This article looks at the many risks that accountants are exposed to in the course of doing business and will hopefully convince every accountant who reads it that PI Insurance is not something they can afford to be without.
Finding the right professional indemnity insurance policy for your business is an important task to make sure your company is protected.
Nursing is a vital profession in hospitals and nursing homes around Australia, but the people who work as nurses are exposed to a unique range of risks. If a nurse were to make a mistake or an error of judgement — for example administer the wrong medication, fail to follow a doctor’s instructions or give incorrect advice to a patient — they could find themselves the subject of a lawsuit for a breach of their professional duty.
This is where professional indemnity insurance shows its worth. This type of cover offers much-needed financial protection for nurses against claims of negligence or malpractice. It covers the cost of your legal defence as well as any compensation you may be legally required to pay to a third party. Public relations costs to repair your professional image are also covered by professional indemnity policies.
In order to find the right professional indemnity insurance policy for you, compare policies at finder.com.au and seek advice from colleagues. Compare quotes from a number of insurers and seek help from an insurance consultant if required.
I am working as a short term educational adviser in the TAFE sector in the Pacific. I have been told I need to get Public Liability and Professional Indemnity insurance. I do not understand why I need public liability as I am working at a TAFE institute.
Hi Angela,
Thanks for your inquiry.
Professional indemnity insurance applies to individuals and organizations involved in providing services based extensively on personal knowledge and skills.
It protects your business against claims for loss by a client or a third party if you make mistakes and are found to have been negligent.
Typically engineers, solicitors, consultants, and accountants carry PII, but many self-employed are also now choosing to have cover if they provide advice, support or contract auditing.
PII covers claims against an individual for a breach of a professional duty but, depending on the policy, cover can extend to:
• Misleading and deceptive conduct
• defamation
• Breach of intellectual property rights
• Damages arising from fraud
• Defence costs associated with claims
Insured amounts can vary depending on the level of risk to which you are exposed.
If you think of some project disasters, these sums are not unreasonable.
Hope this information helped.
Cheers,
Arnold
Where, as an Australian company, can I go to find public liability insurance in Chile?
Hi Tony,
Thanks for getting in touch. Many South American countries require insurance to be purchased in that country and you cannot use an international insurance policy, so you will need to look for insurance from a provider in Chile.
I hope this was helpful,
Richard