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Industry Practice · Services, health & logistics

Professional Services & Consulting

Cover for law firms, accounting practices, management consultancies, audit firms and other professional service organisations, PI, cyber, office and people.

Professional indemnityCyber & client dataOffice property & contents
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The sector

The advice is the product; the liability outlives the engagement.

Professional services firms carry professional indemnity as their primary exposure, errors and omissions, advice given, work delivered, typically on long-tail discovery patterns. Cyber and office cover sit alongside, with workforce benefits increasingly required for senior-talent retention.

Risk profile

Where the exposure lives.

Professional firms carry indemnity, cyber and office exposure above physical risk. We scope these four first.

01
Professional indemnity
Advice or work errors causing client financial loss, typically the dominant exposure for the firm.
02
Cyber & client data
Confidential client data held under professional and DPDPA obligations, breach exposure is reputational as well as financial.
03
Office property & contents
Premises, IT hardware and document/file value.
04
Fidelity exposure
Client-trust-account or fee-collection roles create dishonesty exposure that PI does not cover.
Recommended cover

The programme we typically place.

Each cover below is a link to the policy page. The combination, the limits and the wording are what we negotiate on your behalf.

01
Public Liability
Combined professional indemnity and general liability with discovery-period extensions.
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02
Cyber Insurance
Data breach, ransomware and DPDPA notification cost cover for client-record exposure.
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03
Office Package Policy
Bundled office property and contents cover.
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04
Fidelity Insurance
Employee dishonesty cover for client-trust and fee-handling roles.
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05
Group Coverage
Group medical and life cover for partner and associate talent retention.
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Claim reality

What a claim tends to look like here.

The defining claim is a professional-liability allegation, a negligent advice, error or omission that causes a client loss, often accompanied today by a cyber or data-breach exposure. The office and its equipment are a secondary concern.

Questions

Questions we get in this sector.

Professional indemnity responds to claims of negligence, error or omission in professional services or advice, including legal defence costs. Consultants, advisers, architects, accountants and similar firms carry it as standard.
Holding client data creates a cyber and privacy exposure that professional indemnity may not fully address. We pair professional indemnity with cyber cover so a data incident and a negligence claim are both covered.
By the largest engagement rather than by fee income, tempered by what client contracts require. A single project can create an exposure many times the annual fee earned from it, and the limit should reflect that project rather than the practice's turnover.
Back to the retroactive date and no further, and only where nobody knew of the circumstances when the policy was taken. Professional indemnity is claims-made, so continuity of cover matters more than on most classes.
Usually yes for work done while at the firm, and a retiring partner should confirm run-off arrangements. A claim can arrive years after somebody has left, and the firm's current policy is what answers for it.

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