A professional indemnity policy must be current at the time you are held liable for whatever it is you are alleged to have done. This is known as a “claims made” policy, because you have to have it in place when the claim is made against you. This differs from public liability, which has to be in place when the damage happened that the claim relates to, even if the discovery or notification of the damage isn’t until much later.
Professional indemnity policies also have a “retroactive date”. This is the earliest date when you first took out the policy and it won’t cover any events that happened before this date.
When it comes to renewing the policy each year it is very important that you complete the declaration promptly, and certainly before the expiry date. If your policy lapses, even for one day, that retroactive date may reset and you will lose cover for any and all jobs that happened before the new retroactive date.
Also, if you become aware of an issue (perhaps a customer makes a complaint or an allegation against you) notify us immediately. Here’s what you don’t do:
– Don’t wait,
– Don’t try and battle it out yourself,
– Don’t appoint your own lawyers before alerting your insurer.
All these things could affect whether your claim is accepted.