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Liability insurance for a copywriting agency
An agency supplies other people's work under its own name. That shifts both the liability and the question of who has to be on the policy.
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Deze pagina in het Nederlands: Aansprakelijkheidsverzekering voor een copywritingbureau.
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.
Enter your details; you will receive a proposal within one working day.
- 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
Public and employers' liability insurance (AVB) covers injury and property damage caused by your agency. For a copywriting agency that lies mainly in the office and in visits to customers: a visitor who falls in your building, water damage from a tap left running on the rented floor, a damaged screen at a customer's premises during a workshop. The substantive risk of your services lies elsewhere, with professional indemnity insurance.
What distinguishes an agency from a self-employed writer is the layer of freelancers. You supply under your own name work made by hired-in copywriters, editors and translators. Under Article 6:171 of the Dutch Civil Code your client can hold you liable for the mistakes of those non-subordinates. Include an obligation to insure and an indemnity in your model agreement, check every year that the cover is still in place, and record who transfers the rights to the work supplied.
Three things fall outside it as standard. Infringement of copyright through text or images taken from elsewhere is almost always excluded by liability insurers. The costs of a data breach involving customer files, embargoed information or personal data belong on a cyber insurance. And fines from a regulator are not insurable. An administrative sanction is not compensation and therefore falls outside every liability policy.
This page deals with one situation. The full overview is on Compare public and employers' liability insurance (AVB).
What is different for an agency compared with an individual writer
Four points on which a copywriting agency's cover is assessed.
Mistakes by hired-in writers
The client has one contracting party: your agency. If a freelancer supplies a text with an incorrect claim or a passage taken from elsewhere, the claim comes to you. Article 6:171 of the Dutch Civil Code makes you liable for non-subordinates carrying out your assignment. Arrange that by contract and through insurance. An indemnity on paper does not help if the freelancer has no means to pay.
The rented office
Fire, water and glass damage to a rented floor falls under tenant's liability, a section that is not always included as standard. Check what the lease says about liability and the obligation to insure. This is not the right policy for your own equipment and fittings. There is for that. business contents insurance.
Staff, trainees and secondment
As an employer you have the duty of care under Article 7:658 of the Dutch Civil Code, which through subsection 4 also applies to trainees and seconded staff. In the office that means an up-to-date risk assessment and evaluation and a properly set-up workplace, including for home working. If your writers regularly work at customers' premises, declare that situation in the application. It changes the risk profile.
Work for foreign clients
If you supply customers outside the Netherlands, check the area of cover and the provision on claims from the United States and Canada, which is often excluded. Look too at which law your terms and conditions declare applicable. A claim under foreign law can fall outside the policy even where the work was produced here.
What does your premium depend on?
- Payroll and number of employees: the basis for employers' liability
- Size of the freelance layer: how much work is subcontracted under your own name
- Annual turnover: a measure of the scale of the services
- Office arrangements: rented space calls for tenant's liability
- Area of cover: foreign clients widen the risk
- Sum insured and excess: per claim and per insurance year
Insurers weigh these details differently. That is where your saving is.
What is covered
| Situation | AVB | BAV |
|---|---|---|
| A job applicant falls over a loose floor strip in your stairwell | Yes | No |
| Your editor pulls a presentation screen off the wall at a customer's premises | Yes | No |
| Water from your kitchenette runs down into the office of the tenant below | Yes | No |
| A trainee develops wrist complaints after months of editing at a workstation that was not set up properly | Provided that | No |
| A rights holder serves notice on your customer about a passage a freelancer had taken from elsewhere | No | No |
| The customer holds you to a contractual penalty for late delivery of the annual report texts | No | No |
The claim comes in to your agency, even where the mistake lies with a hired-in writer.
Frequently asked questions
This is what people ask us most.
Are our freelancers covered on the agency's AVB?
Not automatically. Some policies name hired-in workers among the insured persons, others only your own staff. Ask about this expressly and have freelancers hold public and employers' liability and professional indemnity insurance of their own as well. Declare in the application what part of your output is subcontracted. That ratio counts in the assessment.
A customer claims reprint costs because of an error in our text. Is that covered?
Not on the AVB. There is no injury and no damaged property, so it is pure financial loss. A claim of that kind belongs on professional indemnity insurance, provided that has been taken out and the error falls within the period of cover. Build in a written sign-off round as well: a signed final version limits the discussion about who should have spotted the error.
We process customer data and embargoed information. What covers that?
A liability insurance does not pay the costs of investigation, remediation and notification after a data breach. A cyber insurance is intended for that, and it can also include liability towards the data subjects. Fines from the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (the Dutch data protection authority) remain outside cover in all cases, because an administrative fine is a punishment and not compensation.
We are expanding into video and events. Do we have to declare that?
Yes. The cover follows the insured capacity on the policy schedule. If you start filming on location, hiring equipment or organising gatherings, the risk changes materially. Article 7:928 of the Dutch Civil Code requires you to give full information when taking out the insurance. If it turns out afterwards that an activity was not declared, the insurer can reduce the payout under Article 7:930 DCC.
Read more
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