Whether you’re a startup or well established company, having the right business insurance policies in place is crucial for your continued success. As business insurance brokers, we are able to regularly witness the unfortunate financial consequences faced by companies who were either overinsured, underinsured or were marketed the wrong products. Not being equipped with the right insurance for your unique situation could be disastrous for your company.

But where do you start, and what insurance should you invest in? What’s the difference between Professional Indemnity Insurance, Public Liability Insurance or Business Insurance? Should you get IT Liability Insurance if you already have Cyber Insurance?

When starting your journey, we encourage you to speak to a licensed professional (such as our business insurance brokers in Brisbane). If you’re considering investing in insurance but don’t know where to start, we’ve written this short, beginner’s guide to business insurance. But you can use this as a quick business insurance guide as your first point of reference.

Business Insurance Summary

A comprehensive Business Insurance Package policy can protect businesses against unforeseen losses. It provides multiple forms of coverage within one combined policy which saves you time and money.

Business Insurance can cover:

Professional Indemnity Insurance Summary

Professional Indemnity Insurance protects your business from claims made by your clients and customers against you as a result of the advice that you provide them. If your business provides advice or service for a fee then you will be deemed to be providing a professional service.

Professional Indemnity Insurance can cover:

  • Liability for Damage as a result of negligent advice
  • Legal costs including any awarded against you
  • Claim Investigation Costs
  • Unintentional infringement of intellectual property rights
  • Public Relations / Crisis Management costs
  • Defamation

Public Liability Insurance

Public Liability Insurance provides you with protection for claims made against you in the course of running your business. Liability Insurance will provide cover for personal injury and property damage claims which are brought by members of the public, customers and other external parties.

The policy will provide cover for where you have been negligent and will also cover the cost of defending any claims against your business.

Typically, Public Liability Insurance covers your business in the event there is a claim against you for Personal Injury and /or Property damage arising from your business activities. A Liability Insurance policy will cover you for your legal liability and will also extend to cover your legal defence costs to assist in defending the claim or settling the claim.

An example of such a liability insurance claim is where a customer may slip and fall on your premises, consequently suing you for breaching your duty of care – your insurance should then be able to help cover the potential costs associated with this.

IT Liability Insurance

IT Insurance (or ITC Liability Insurance) is designed to protect you against the numerous risks you may face when you are working as an IT-related professional. Technology is rapidly evolving, and along comes multiple risks that IT Insurance can help mitigate.

The main advantages of a specialist IT Liability Insurance policy is that it combines both Professional Indemnity and Public and Product Liability coverage under the one insurance policy which avoids any gaps in coverage if the two policies are placed with separate insurers. IT Liability policies also extend to provide additional benefits, which in turn provide important forms of cover that address key exposures associated with provision of IT products and services.

IT Liability Insurance has the potential to provide insurance cover for professionals such as:

  • IT professionals
  • IT contractors
  • Programmers
  • Data processing professionals
  • Warehousing professionals
  • Website designers and developers
  • App designers and developers
  • Software designers and developers
  • Project Managers
  • Hardware installation, maintenance and repair
  • IT recruiters
  • Data analysts
  • SCADA/PLC Services
  • IT-related support and troubleshooting
  • Domain and web hosting providers
  • Website security specialists
  • Systems integrations specialists
  • Digital advertising, marketing and communications specialists
  • Systems analysts
  • Software and hardware sales

Cyber Insurance

In today’s business world, all businesses depend on, to varying degrees, on a digital network, whether it’s to trade online, store company documents or process payroll. Emerging risks from a digital world include sophisticated cyber theft attacks which involve businesses being defrauded and unknowingly transferring money to cyber criminals.

There is also an increasing amount of regulation which makes companies legally responsible for how they manage data and the personal and company records that are stored electronically.

A Cyber Insurance policy is designed to protect your business from a breach of your digital network and the resultant financial loss which can extend to:

  • Financial loss arising from cyber theft
  • Loss of your company profits
  • Fines and penalties payable for breaching privacy regulation laws
  • Losses payable to others for breaching their right to privacy

We hope you found this guide useful. As mentioned above, we recommend speaking to a licensed and reputable business insurance broker before making your next move.

Important Disclaimer – Crucial Insurance and Risk Advisors Pty Ltd ABN 93 166 630 511 .  This article provides information rather than financial product or other advice. The content of this article, including any information contained on it, has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. You should consider the appropriateness of the information, taking these matters into account, before you act on any information. In particular, you should review the product disclosure statement for any product that the information relates to it before acquiring the product.

Information is current as at the date articles are written as specified within them but is subject to change. Crucial Insurance, its subsidiaries and its associates make no representation as to the accuracy or completeness of the information. All information is subject to copyright and may not be reproduced without the prior written consent of Crucial Insurance.