Sustainability claims · savings forecasts · grant applications
Professional indemnity insurance (BAV) for a sustainability consultancy
Sustainability advice ends up as figures on which someone else bases their communication, their investment or their grant application. If those figures are wrong, the detriment is purely financial.
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Deze pagina in het Nederlands: Beroepsaansprakelijkheidsverzekering voor een duurzaamheidsadviesbureau.
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.
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A premium indication, not personal advice. Prefer to talk it through? Call 072 - 509 24 56.
In brief
A sustainability consultancy delivers calculations, scenarios and reports. The loss arising from them is pure financial loss: nothing is broken and no one is injured, but a client has spent money or missed out on it on the strength of your document. An emissions item allocated incorrectly in a value chain analysis, a decarbonisation plan built on an incorrect baseline, or a roadmap that counts in a measure which turns out not to be technically feasible: those are the claims this profession has to deal with.
What is distinctive about this sector is that your report often goes out into the world. A client puts the outcome in an annual report, a tender or an advertisement. If the underlying work turns out to be weak, what follows is not only a discussion with your client but possibly also an allegation of a misleading sustainability claim. Articles 6:193a ff. of the Dutch Civil Code on unfair commercial practices and Article 6:194 of the Dutch Civil Code on misleading statements are then on the table. Your client bears that burden and looks for recovery from the party that supplied the figures.
The standard against which your work is judged is Article 7:401 of the Dutch Civil Code: the care of a reasonably competent and reasonably acting contractor. That is not an obligation to achieve a result. If you promise a saving or a score, however, that changes. Damage to property and injury during a site survey do not belong here but on the public and employers' liability insurance. If you work with self-employed professionals, also look at professional liability for sustainability consultants.
This page deals with one situation. The full overview is on Compare professional indemnity insurance (BAV).
What to look out for
Four subjects that go wrong more often in sustainability advice than in other advisory work.
Your figures become someone else's claim
As soon as a client uses your result in external communication, the quality of your underlying work becomes a public matter. Record for each report which sources, assumptions and system boundaries you used, and that the text may not be reproduced without context. Without that record it cannot be separated afterwards what you wrote and what the client made of it.
A promise of savings is an obligation to achieve a result
If you state a payback period or a percentage saving without a range and without a reservation, a court will readily read that as a undertaking. Liability under warranties that go beyond the professional standard is excluded on virtually every policy. So work with scenarios, name the uncertainties and set out your assumptions in the report itself.
Grant and scheme applications
Advice on a scheme involves strict deadlines and formal requirements. An application submitted late, the wrong category or incomplete supporting material can lead to refusal or to a later clawback. That amount is entirely pure financial loss and stands apart from your fee. Check whether advising on grants falls within your stated professional capacity. Some insurers carve this out.
Exclusions that affect this work
Excluded are, among others administrative fines and penalty payments, the carrying out your own engagement again including repayment of fees, and liability under warranties, guaranteed returns and performance contracts. Loss caused by intent or wilful recklessness also falls outside the cover; Article 7:952 of the Dutch Civil Code provides the statutory basis for that. Circumstances you already knew about when you took out the policy are not insurable.
What does your premium depend on?
- Annual turnover from advisory work: the usual basis at a consultancy
- Type of assignments: measurement and reporting weigh differently from strategic advice
- Size of the clients: listed or public sector clients increase the loss potential
- Number of consultants and hired-in specialists: determines the class of insured persons
- Engagement terms used: with or without a limitation of liability
- Retroactive period: for reports you have issued in the past
Insurers weigh these details differently. That is where your saving is.
What is covered
| Situation | AVB | BAV |
|---|---|---|
| An emissions item is counted twice and your client has to revise his annual report | No | Yes |
| Your measuring equipment damages a pipe during a survey in the factory hall | Yes | No |
| A measure from the roadmap turns out not to be achievable under planning law and the project is halted | No | Yes |
| A financier of your client brings a claim directly against you over the figures in your report | No | Provided that |
| Your client withholds the final instalment because the report was months late | No | No |
| Your consultancy loses a tender after negative publicity about an earlier report | No | No |
Once your figures end up in an annual report or a tender, a party with no contract with you can come forward as well; check whether the policy can handle that.
Frequently asked questions
This is what people ask us most.
We only work through what the client supplies. Are we liable then?
That depends on what you did with that data. An adviser who fails to spot obvious errors in data supplied to him falls short in his duty to investigate and to warn. So state in the report which data comes from the client, that you have not verified it, and which checks you did carry out. That record is your most important defence when a claim arrives.
Our client received a fine after a misleading sustainability claim. Is that covered?
Your client's fine is his loss, not your penalty, so it does not fall under the exclusion for your own fines. Whether the insurer pays depends on whether the allegation concerns your report or the way the client quoted from it. A fine imposed on your own consultancy is always excluded.
Why does the claims-made basis matter here?
Sustainability reports are only tested years later, for instance during an audit or a transaction. A claims-made policy covers claims that reach you and are notified during the policy period, not the moment at which you wrote the report. If the insurance has already ended by then, you carry the claim yourself. So arrange retroactive cover at inception and run-off cover on termination.
Do we also need cyber insurance?
Often, yes. You process commercially sensitive consumption, production and supplier data belonging to clients. If that leaks, it is a matter of investigation, recovery and notifications, and that falls outside professional indemnity insurance. For that, a cyber insurance is the appropriate policy. The two policies dovetail. When you take them out, have it checked that there is no gap between them.
Read more
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