Professional Liability Insurance / Errors & Omissions Liability Insurance (E&O)

What is Professional Liability Insurance?

Pirbright Professions is the exclusive provider of Hiscox Professional Liability Insurance in Canada.

Professional Liability insurance, also known as Errors & Omissions (E&O), can help protect you if claims are brought against you by a client due to a problem with work you have undertaken for them.  The error could result in either financial loss or property and physical damages to your client.  Even if such allegations are baseless, it can be a very stressful and costly process to defend.

As a professional, you are expected to have the knowledge, experience and training to perform the job as hired within the standards of your profession.  If you fail to perform to these standards, you can be held responsible for harm caused.

Who requires Professional Liability Insurance?

Professional Liability insurance is mandatory for certain professionals and highly recommended for others.  If in the provision of services you provide the following:

• Advice to your clients
• Services to handle data belonging to a client or business
• Responsibility for a client’s intellectual property
• A professional service for which you could be challenged on your work. You may feel confident in the quality of your work, but any small business is vulnerable to a claim of negligence when professional advice or services fail to meet a client’s expectations and cause financial loss

What are the potential exposures for Professional Liability?

• Professional negligence, such as making a mistake in a piece of work for a client, or providing poor advice
• Unintentional breach of confidentiality and/or copyright
• Defamation and libel
• Loss of documents or data
• Loss of money or goods (for which you are responsible)

What coverages are provided with Professional Liability Insurance policies:

• legal costs and expenses in defending a claim
• any compensation or costs that may subsequently be awarded

You may already have Commercial General Liability coverage as part of a business commercial package; however, Commercial General Liability policies specifically exclude professional liability.  For this reason, Professional Liability is important for any business or professional that could make an error in professional service that could lead to a financial loss by a client.  Professional Liability insures the business owner’s mistakes as well as those made by employees and subcontractors.

A professional indemnity policy provides peace of mind, both for the insured and their clients.

To help protect your business in Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Pirbright Professions Inc. can provide small businesses with Professional Liability insurance or Errors & Omissions insurance as a standalone policy.  Alternatively, Professional Liability can be purchased together with Commercial General Liability, Office Property Package policies or other lines of coverage such as Directors & Officers Liability and Cyber Liability Insurance coverage.  All companies have potential exposures in all of these areas.

Should you have any queries or require any further information, please contact us.