Reporting Changes That Affect Your ACCA Insurance Coverage

A higher excess reduces your premium but means you pay more of each claim yourself. Make sure the excess is genuinely affordable without causing financial strain.

• Understand the claims process, including how to contact the insurer's emergency helpline.
• Know what is not covered (exclusions) such as wear and tear, mechanical breakdown, or damage from certain events.
• Check if the policy provides a guaranteed hire car following a non-fault accident.
• Be aware of the insurer's approved repairer network and any implications for using it.

Artemis Advice: We always recommend erring on the side of a higher indemnity limit rather than a lower one. The additional annual premium for moving from £500,000 to £1,000,000 of cover is often a few hundred pounds at most.

12. Audit-specific PI considerations

The campaign underperforms and the client's revenue falls short of their targets. The client claims the consultant's strategy was flawed and seeks compensation for the shortfall. The consultant believes their work met all agreed specifications. Regardless of who is right, the consultant now faces a legal dispute. Without professional indemnity insurance, the cost of defending that case, whether they win or lose, is entirely their own.

Do accountants need public liability insurance?

With PI insurance in place, the insurer covers the legal defence costs from the outset and any damages awarded if the case goes against them. That protection is what professional indemnity insurance exists to provide. Key Point: PI insurance covers claims that arise from the professional services you provide. It is distinct from public liability insurance, which covers claims from third parties injured or having property damaged by your business activities. A standard professional indemnity insurance policy in the UK will typically cover the following types of claim.

6.3 Heads of damage in tax PI claims

This is the most common type of PI claim. A client alleges that your professional advice or services fell below the standard of care expected, and that this failure caused them financial loss. Cover can include both the cost of legal defence and any damages awarded. Sometimes referred to as E&O insurance, this covers claims arising from mistakes in your work, deliverables, or professional output. A software developer ships code with a critical bug. The difference in protection it provides can be the difference between a business surviving a claim and one that does not.

Customer reviews

We will give you a real figure based on your actual situation, not a generic estimate. •Your profession and the nature of the work you do •The indemnity limit you require, for example £500,000 versus £5,000,000 •Your excess, which is the amount you contribute to each claim before the insurer pays •Your claims history over the previous five years •The size of individual contracts or projects you undertake •Whether your clients include public sector bodies or large organisations with higher risk profiles •Whether your work has an international element, as some policies exclude non-UK work Choosing the right indemnity limit is one of the most important decisions you will make when taking out a PI policy. Too low and you risk being underinsured when a significant claim is made . The starting point is your regulatory requirement, if you have one. Solicitors must comply with SRA minimum limits.

What does run-off cover mean for PI insurance?

For professions with no regulatory floor, consider the following questions. 1.What is the maximum fee value of any single contract or project you undertake? Your indemnity limit should typically be a multiple of this, not equal to it, because legal costs alone can easily exceed the value of the contract in dispute. 2.What do your clients contractually require? Check your standard client contracts and any frameworks or approved supplier lists you are registered on. This is one of the most important technical distinctions in professional indemnity insurance, and one that many business owners overlook when comparing policies.

Run-off cover — easy to ignore, expensive to forget

Many specify minimum PI limits of £2 million, £3 million, or higher. 3.What is the highest-risk piece of advice or work you provide? Think about the downstream consequences if that advice is wrong. The potential financial impact on your client should inform your indemnity limit. 4.What level of excess can you comfortably absorb? The vast majority of PI insurance policies in the UK are written on a claims made basis.

Professional Indemnity Insurance by Profession

Each of these scenarios represents an error or omission that can give rise to a PI claim. If your business inadvertently discloses confidential client information, for example by sending a document to the wrong recipient or failing to secure sensitive data appropriately, a PI policy will typically cover the resulting claim. If your professional communications, published content, or advice contains statements that a third party considers defamatory, PI insurance can cover the defence costs and any resulting damages. If your professional work inadvertently infringes a third party's copyright, trade mark, or other intellectual property rights, PI insurance can cover the claim. This is a growing area of risk for designers, copywriters, marketing agencies, and software developers.

6.2 The composite CIOT/ATT picture

If client documents, data, or records in your care are lost, damaged, or destroyed, PI insurance covers the resulting claim. This is particularly relevant for legal, accounting, and financial services businesses that hold significant volumes of sensitive client records. Important: PI insurance does not cover intentional wrongdoing, fraud, or criminal acts. It does not cover claims arising from work that was explicitly outside the agreed scope of your services. It does not cover personal injury or property damage claims, which fall under public liability insurance.

15.4 Run-off after an IP ceases practice

It does not cover employment disputes with your own staff, which is the territory of employers liability insurance. Several UK professions are required to hold professional indemnity insurance as a condition of their regulatory authorisation or professional body membership. Operating without it in these cases is not just financially risky. Note for Solicitors: The SRA sets minimum indemnity limits and requires policies to be taken out with SRA-approved insurers only. Artemis Insurance Brokers has direct access to leading Law Society-panel insurers and can arrange SRA-compliant PI cover for solicitors of all sizes. This means the policy that responds to a claim is the policy that is in force at the time the claim is made against you, not at the time the work was originally carried out.

If a client makes a claim against you in 2026 for work you did in 2023, your 2026 policy responds.

How Artemis Insurance Brokers Can Help with Professional Indemnity Insurance

Beyond the regulated professions above, there is a very broad range of UK businesses and self-employed professionals for whom PI insurance is strongly advisable, even when not legally required. If any of the following apply to your business, you should be considering PI cover. •You provide advice, recommendations, or professional opinions that clients rely on to make decisions •You produce designs, plans, specifications, documents, or reports that form the basis of your client's actions •Your contracts with clients include performance obligations or professional standards requirements •Your clients are larger organisations that require proof of PI insurance before awarding work •You work in the public sector or on government contracts, where PI insurance is almost universally required •You handle sensitive client information, financial data, or intellectual property •You provide IT, technology, or software development services •You work as a contractor through an agency or umbrella company The list of professions for whom PI insurance is commercially essential, even without a regulatory mandate, includes management consultants, marketing and communications agencies, PR firms, HR consultants, business coaches, software developers, IT consultants, project managers, training providers, healthcare consultants, and many more. Cost is one of the first practical questions professionals ask when researching PI insurance, and it deserves bet best free bets new customers a straight answer. The honest truth is that there is no meaningful figure we can give you without understanding your business, because the variables that drive PI premiums are significant and they interact in ways that make any generic number misleading.

Horse Racing

What we can tell you is exactly what those variables are, because understanding what drives your premium is the most useful starting point before you speak to a broker or insurer. The main factors that affect the cost of professional indemnity insurance in the UK are your profession and the specific nature of the work you carry out, your annual fee income or turnover, the indemnity limit you need, whether your regulatory body sets a minimum that you cannot go below, your claims history over the previous five years, the size of individual contracts or projects you take on, and whether your clients are large organisations with contractual minimum requirements built into their supplier agreements. A sole trader consultant in a lower-risk advisory field will pay considerably less than a technology company handling sensitive client data on high-value contracts. A solicitor in a high-volume conveyancing practice operates in one of the most heavily loaded PI risk categories in the UK market. An architect working on large commercial projects faces fundamentally different exposure to one producing domestic planning applications.

Accountancy Body PII Limits of Insurance

The same profession can carry very different premiums depending on the specific risk profile of the individual business. Selecting the lowest available premium without understanding the quality of the cover behind it is one of the most common and costly mistakes professionals make with PI insurance. A policy with a high excess, restrictive exclusions, or poor claims handling can leave you significantly exposed at exactly the moment you need your insurer to perform. The most accurate and reliable way to understand what PI insurance will cost for your specific business is to speak with an independent broker who has direct access to a wide panel of specialist PI insurers and understands the underwriting criteria each one applies to your profession. Call Artemis on 020 8619 5000 or email info@artemisltd.co.uk for a no-obligation PI insurance quote tailored to your profession and your risk profile. This has an important practical consequence: your PI cover must be continuous.

• Maintain a valid motor insurance certificate (Certificate of Motor Insurance) for each vehicle.
• Ensure the insurance policy covers at least third-party liability as a minimum legal requirement.
• Display a valid insurance disc on the vehicle's windscreen if required by local jurisdiction.
• Notify your insurer immediately of any changes to vehicle details or registered keeper.
• Inform the insurer of any modifications that could affect the vehicle's risk profile.