The Recruitment Consultants policy explained...
What's special about this policy?
As a consultant you need Professional Indemnity insurance because you are regarded as providing a professional service.
Today, people who use professional services are more likely than ever to blame the professional when things go wrong.
This policy protects you in seven ways:
- Against claims for negligence and breach of duty or care.
- From negligent misstatement or negligent misrepresentation.
- Against infringement of intellectual property rights.
- From claims of breach of confidence or misuse of information.
- Against claims of defamation and dishonesty of partners, directors and employees.
- From civil liability claims.
- In certain circumstances your fees will be covered if a client refuses to pay because of your negligent act and theatens to counter-claim if you pursue what's owed to you.
Online, the cover we offer is ex-vicarious, which means cover does not apply to the actions of your placed staff. We can put together a tailored quote for you to extend the cover to protect you from vicarious liability for the actions of placed staff, just give us a call.
Policy documents
The documents for our online policy are linked below:
Who's it for?
- Recruitment consultant
- HR consultant
- Search consultant
- 'Head hunter'
- Employment and Recruitment Agencies
- Umbrella companies
Why do you need Professional Indemnity insurance?
As a consultant, you could be personally liable for giving incorrect advice if, for example, you were responsible for a breach of confidential information, misrepresenting the interests of one of your clients, or recommending a dishonest individual, or placing a new recruit in a position which they don’t have the skills to fulfil.
In law, as a professional, you owe a ‘duty of care’ to the people you work for.
As a recruitment consultant, you could be regarded as working for an employer as well as individuals seeking to change roles - a large number of people who could make a claim of negligence against you.
The chance of a claim being made against you is very small, but if a claim was made, you could find it to be very expensive to defend yourself.
Claims example
A recruitment consultancy inadvertently sent a candidate’s CV to his then current employers with a covering letter advising mistakenly that the candidate may have a fee base to bring with him in his new role.
The candidate’s employers responded to this revelation immediately, informing him that he had not only breached their trust but that he was guilty of gross misconduct and was to be dismissed from his employment.
The consultancy was subsequently sued for breach of duty of their care to their candidate but they had Professional Indemnity in place which covered the claim.
