A family affair
When it comes to PI cover, business opportunities may be closer than you thinkHiscox wants to highlight the many new and unusual professions out there – from badger consultants to painting authenticators — and to help brokers target these areas for new business. The ever-increasing rise in these non-traditional careers means that there are plenty of professionals around who need insurance.
Gary Head, Hiscox Professions Underwriting Director, knows this better than most — he comes from a family of entrepreneurs who know the value of good Professional Indemnity (PI) cover.
“If I didn’t work in insurance, I doubt that any of my family would have a PI policy,” says Gary. “There must be brokers with friends or family who work as personal trainers, IT consultants or hairdressers, all of whom could do with a PI policy if things were to go wrong. Many professionals aren’t aware that not having PI cover could jeopardise both their business and their livelihood.”
Here, some members of Gary’s family tell us why they wouldn’t leave home without PI cover.
Paul Head — Gary’s brother
“I have two jobs: I’m a chartered accountant and work as a ski instructor in Switzerland in the winter. The risks are very different, but PI cover is crucial for both.
“As an accountant, for example, I could get sued if I were to give a client advice about their finances that turned out to be incorrect.
“As a ski instructor, I need PI to protect myself against injury and resultant loss of earnings. I also have to ensure that I’m covered if one of my clients, or someone else on the piste, were to get hurt as a result of my teaching.”
Dave Head — Gary’s dad
“Before I retired, I worked in the plastics industry for 30 years. For seven of those years, I owned a consultancy company, advising companies who were looking to buy plastics machinery. I would advise a manufacturer on the technical aspects of the different machines that would work best for, say, a new toy they were producing, as well as which machine would provide them with the level of output they needed.
“Much of my knowledge was based on information from third parties, usually the machinery manufacturers. Because the profits of my clients depended on the machines’ production capacities, the advice I gave them had to be spot on. If it wasn’t, they could have sued me for ‘consequential losses’ – the money they lost as a result of my error. So PI cover was essential for peace of mind.”
Sam Head — Gary’s wife
“As a freelance home economist, I develop and test recipes, sort out the food and equipment for TV cookery programmes and photograph food for books and magazines. I also organise cookery demonstrations for well-known chefs.
“The first risk I face is physical injury, the potential for which is never far away when you’re around flames and knives. There’s also the chance of food poisoning or allergies. The other risk is that, if I’m working on a programme and something goes wrong with the food, the production company could sue me for lost time.
“Luckily, I haven’t had to claim yet, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t have cover.”
Jean Head — Gary’s mum
“Prior to retirement, I worked for a local education authority as a schools inspector before becoming a freelance inspector for Ofsted, assessing both schools’ performance and graduates doing their one-year teacher training.
“It was important I had insurance to cover me against the risk of physical injury – if I were to run over a child in the car park, for example. The other reason was that the reports that I wrote on schools were publicly available and, although the judgements I made about an individual’s performance were confidential, that individual could still challenge them. If that happened, I would have needed the cover to help me with any legal fees.”