I was recently approached by a contact on Linkedin whose Professional Indemnity and Public Liability policy was due for renewal and he had decided that it probably wasn’t fit for purpose any longer.

The obvious point was that he didn’t have any Employers’ Liability cover and, as he now owned the limited company with another shareholder and they held unequal shares, he had a statutory requirement to have that cover in place.

However, his main concern and the reason he had approached me in the first place, was that he didn’t have any Cyber Liability cover. As an IT consultant this was very important to him as he was aware, more so than many perhaps, that it’s not a case of if but when in the case of Cyber incidents.

My preferred option here is CFC Underwriting as their Tech product automatically provides all of the covers an IT firm could hope for and their Underwriters there are a really switched on.

After a video call via Google Hangouts with the two directors, I established what it is they required, ascertained how they’d found other providers they’d approached to be lacking particularly in the field of Cyber, and we’d established a plan of action.

I completed the Proposal Form using the information I’d gathered during the video call and sent that over to CFC within an hour of hanging up. A matter of hours later I had a quote from CFC providing not only the obvious Professional Indemnity, Public Liability and Employers’ Liability sections, it also had the crucial Cyber covers such as Privacy Breach Notifications, System Damage, System Business Interruption and Threats or Extortion.

This exercise proves that CFC is a no-brainer in the Cyber field. Cyber and Privacy Liability are provided automatically on a Third-Party basis – covering you in the event someone makes a claim against you for a loss as a result of your work – we can easily extend the cover to ensure you yourself are covered for these losses too. What we call ‘First-Party’.

This was demonstrated even further when another IT Consultancy client of mine – in this instance a longstanding client – obtained an alternative quote from Hiscox that seemingly also provided the same cover. On further investigation though, it turned out it was only covering those third-party losses, not his company’s own, and was only providing that cover to half the limit he was buying in respect of Professional Indemnity. Needless to say, he quickly decided to renew with CFC!

IT and Tech businesses are new to many insurance brokers and Cyber is a new and developing sector of the industry as a whole. When buying this ever more important cover, be safe in the knowledge that we are switched on to the potential exposures your industry can suffer and that cover is available out there and we can tailor it accordingly.