Financial loss · claims-made · prior acts
Business insurance for professional services through Allianz
A consultancy rarely drops anything. The loss it causes is money: advice that was wrong, a deadline that passed, a calculation that turned out badly.
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Deze pagina in het Nederlands: Bedrijfsverzekeringen voor de zakelijke dienstverlening via Allianz.
The calculator and the quote form below are in Dutch. Prefer to do this in English? Email info@finassverzekert. nl or call 072 - 509 24 56 and we will take it from there.
Work out for yourself what it would cost.
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- We compare the offerings of several insurers
- An adviser checks whether the cover suits your activities
- We arrange the switch, including cancellation
A premium indication, not personal advice. Prefer to talk it through? Call 072 - 509 24 56.
In brief
Finass acts as an intermediary for the business range of Allianz and is not tied to it. We compare several insurers objectively. For consultants, engineering firms, marketing agencies, interim managers and administrative service providers, the centre of gravity of a package lies elsewhere than for a business with a workshop. public and employers' liability insurance covers injury and property damage and is quickly arranged. Your real exposure lies in what that policy expressly excludes.
That is pure financial loss: financial detriment to a client without anything being broken or anyone being injured. A scenario worked out incorrectly, a missed notification deadline, a tender that falls through because of an error in the file. Professional indemnity insurance (BAV) exists for that. professional indemnity insuranceIt pays not only the loss itself but also bears the defence costs, and it is precisely those costs that mount up before it is established whether you did anything wrong.
A third risk is the continuity of your own office. A consultancy can carry on working almost anywhere after a fire, but not without files and systems. The failure of a hosting provider, encrypted files or a data breach involving client data causes loss of turnover without material damage; ordinary business interruption insurance does not respond then, but cyber insurance does. The wider picture is set out at business services.
This page deals with one situation. The full overview is on SME insurance package.
What to look out for
Four provisions that determine the cover for advisory and office organisations.
The claim counts, not the mistake
Professional indemnity cover almost always runs on a claims-madebasis: what matters is the moment the claim reaches you, not the moment you made the mistake. If you advised three years ago and the client comes forward now, your current policy has to include that old work. That is called prior acts cover and is a separate agreement; as standard the cover starts on the inception date.
Run-off cover on termination or transfer
If your business stops, you retire or you sell the firm, the cover ends on the end date while claims can still come in for years. A run-off cover keeps the policy open for past assignments. Arrange it when you terminate and not afterwards. Without run-off cover you bear claims about your own past personally.
Redoing your own work is excluded
If you have to rewrite a report, correct a calculation or refund a fee, those are costs of your own defective work. They remain outside the cover, even if the underlying mistake would simply have been insured. The same logic applies to a penalty or discount you have accepted contractually: assumed liability that goes further than the law is not automatically included.
The rented office and what you have installed in it
Partition walls, kitchenettes, floors and cabling you had installed in rented premises are tenant's improvements and belong in a section of their own. Damage to the premises themselves through fire or water falls under tenant's liability, and a client's equipment in your care runs into the care, custody and control exclusion of the liability insurance.
What does your premium depend on?
- Annual turnover: the usual basis for professional indemnity cover
- Nature of the assignments: advice with financial consequences weighs more heavily than hands-on work
- Clients and sectors: work for government bodies or financial institutions is assessed more strictly
- Desired retroactive date: the further back it goes, the more past work is included
- General terms and conditions used: a limitation of liability that stands up reduces the risk
- Number of employees: determines the wage bill and therefore the staff-related sections
Insurers weigh these details differently. That is where your saving is.
What is covered
| Situation | AVB | BAV |
|---|---|---|
| An employee spills coffee over a client's laptop | Yes | No |
| A visitor trips over a cable in your meeting room and breaks a wrist | Yes | No |
| A calculation error in your business case costs the client their grant | No | Yes |
| You let a period for objection lapse so that your client can no longer challenge an assessment | No | Yes |
| The legal costs of the defence, while it is not yet established whether you made a mistake | No | Yes |
| Client data is exposed through a data breach | No | Provided that |
For the bottom row, cyber cover is the appropriate policy. The liability and the recovery run together there.
Frequently asked questions
This is what people ask us most.
Why is public and employers' liability insurance not enough for a consultancy?
Because that policy covers injury and property damage and expressly excludes financial detriment without damaged property. A client who says your advice cost them money is claiming exactly that. Without professional indemnity cover you pay both the claim and the legal work around it from your own resources. Having both policies alongside each other is the normal situation in professional services.
My general terms already limit my liability. Is that not enough?
A limitation only helps if the terms were demonstrably handed over before or at the conclusion of the agreement and if the court accepts the clause. In cases of gross negligence such a limitation also rarely stands up. Bring your terms into the application discussion; insurers take them into account, but do not build cover on them.
I suspect a mistake has been made, but the client has said nothing. Do I have to report it?
Yes. You report a circumstance that could reasonably lead to a claim as soon as you know about it; Article 7:941 of the Dutch Civil Code requires this. If you report it in time, a later claim is attributed to the policy then in force. If you wait until the client comes forward and your policy has since changed or ended, the claim may fall between two contracts.
Is a fine from the Dutch data protection authority insurable?
No. Administrative fines and penalty payments are excluded on virtually every policy, because they are a punishment and not compensation for loss. What is insurable are the costs of investigation, recovery, notification and communication after a data breach, plus liability towards the people whose data has been leaked. Those items belong on cyber insurance.
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