Public Liability & Professional Indemnity Insurance

[Rodney 21]

I hope this one gets some of you going as it certainly is me. I have been self employed for some ten years now even though I am a limited company. My public liability insurance is global cover excluding the United States and Canada. However I knew it would happen one day one of my customers has requested I commission some equipment both in Canada and the United States. I contact my insurance broker and explain I am looking for cover in the United States and Canada. Their first responce is that these two countries are exclutions. I explain roughly what I will be doing and there responce is that according to their records I am a computer consultant and plc are public limited companies and not programmable logic controllers. When would I like this cover well starting next week and for approximatlly one month. My insurance company now wants to see my customers contract with there customer in order that they can do a risk assessment. Are there any other small companies out there that have to put up with other people telling you who and what you are and does anyone know of insurance companies particularly on this side of the pond who knows what a P.L.C is. Rodney

[tragically1969 0]

I hear you !! I contracted for a year or so doing a bit of IT and control with my old company and a few others, i was refused insurance by one company telling me "your business activities are too much of a risk", i asked exactly what the meant by this and they said it was taht i had declared i was doing some sys admin on Sage Server, nothing to do with controlling 15kW motors and conveying systems that could dismember people in a blink of an eye !! I was also quoted £1800 a year for PI and PL insurance when my turnover was around £28K, i asked if they thought it was acceptable that they wanted 5% of my turnover in insurance premiums, they had no anwser. I eventually got myself sorted for around £400 from these folks, they knew exactly what i was taking about when i said things like PLC, conduit etc. well worth a look if you fancy a change: http://www.caunceohara.co.uk/

[paulengr 44]

It is quite common for an insurance carrier to insure a particular job. You will pay higher premiums by setting up your insurance on an individual job. For example, I used to get involved in buying a couple million dollars in special event insurance for an auto show. For about 20% more, I could buy the same policy to cover an entire year vs. buying it for a single day. The next year, we set up the dates to stagger the event (host the event a little later one year, a little earlier the next; buy insurance policy for an entire year). It is also not uncommon for insurance carriers that are insuring a JOB to want to see the contracts. And it is also quite common for an insurance carrier to kick anything that they don't recognize as fitting in a particular pigeon hole over to some sort of auditor or actuary. Once you get involved in these people, they will want to get an idea of precisely what you do so that they can calculate the expected size of a payout and the chance that it will happen. This is extremely common for Llyod's and Factory Mutual. In fact, Factory Mutual doesn't even have actuaries...they hire engineers.