Protecting your Business - Complaints, Scammers and Insurance
Complaints, Scammers and getting the right Insurance protection
Protect your business from Complaints and Scammers by reading our blog articles Complaint Handling Toolkit and our online Data Protection training, both free to use by AIPP members.
Reducing the number of harmful issues your business faces is a sensible step, but how do you protect yourself beyond that? An insurance policy can help, but what should you consider? Three key insurances for any business to consider are:
> Professional Liability Insurance
> Cyber, Data Risk and Media Insurance
> Directors and Officers liability Insurance (D&O)
Professional Liability Insurance (also referred to as Professional Indemnity Insurance)
It is now obligatory to have this kind of insurance in many countries, please check your requirements locally. This covers your liability in case of negligence by staff and Directors against customers.
If you have commercial premises you probably already have an insurance policy to cover your contents and liability for customers on the premises. But what about when you are out-and-about with clients outside of the office? You may be able to include professional liability inside your existing commercial premises policy, but this is not always the case.
Insurance characteristics:
- A client believes you have delivered a poor service, acted negligently and threatens litigation
- Insurance can cover costs of defending yourself and compensation
- Damage to client property eg causing a data loss
- Your staff sue you for injury on your premises
- You unintentionally infringe someones intellectual property rights
- Defamation claims against others adversely affecting your clients view of you
Cyber, Data Risk and Media Insurance
This covers an increasingly wide risk profile now typically associated with the following:
- Government fines for data protection breached (as long as you have followed due process in protecting your data)
- Extortion threat cover
- Cyber / malware threats leading to loss of profits
- Media liability cover
- Cost of recreating data stolen
- Data Recovery
In addition, the insurance service provided should offer the following:
- No limit or cap on government fines imposed upon you
- Legal advice
- Public Relations support
- Expert data-breach support
Directors and Officers liability Insurance (D&O)
This is a different type of policy with a larger scope of cover than Professional Liability Insurance and is correspondingly more expensive. This insurance protects the personal assets of company Directors, officers and their spouses. The cover protects against being personally sued by employees, vendors, competitors, investors, customers or other parties.