What’s The Difference Between Public Liability & Professional Indemnity Insurance

18/03/2010

By Insurantz.com

When deciding on what insurance to purchase, its good practice to consider the risks that could impact you and make your decisions based on the most appropriate protection available to meet your requirements. Two insurance covers that can often cause confusion are Public Liability and Professional Indemnity.Whilst both of these covers protect your business against legal action and compensation awards to third parties, they are actually designed to offer different forms of protection in your business activities.

One of the key differences between the covers offered is around the nature of the work that you carry out. If a...

...third party suffers injury or damage to their property as a direct result of any physical work you undertake then Public Liability would protect you, whereas Professional Indemnity would protect you for third party injury or damage if the risk is linked to your professional duty when providing design, advice or a service for a fee.


What is Public Liability?

Public Liability is there to protect your business against the financial risk of for death, bodily injury or damage to property suffered by any third party including members of the general public or other business you work with. The levels of cover available normally start at £1 million.


Examples of scenarios where you would be protected by Public Liability Insurance;

• A carpet fitter accidentally breaks an antique vase when bringing carpet into the house.

• A visitor, tripping over loose carpet in reception, twists their knee requiring surgery and months of physiotherapy.

• A plumber damages a pipe, which leaks into a business’s server room - not only causing thousands of pounds worth of property damage but the resulting damage means the business is unable to carry out work for several weeks.

• A builders scaffolding doesn’t have sufficient safety netting... continued on page two >

 

 

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