Professional Indemnity Insurance - 'Aggregate' Or 'Any One Claim'?

There are literally zillions of professional indemnity policies available online or via brokers. Yet finding the right policy for your freelance business can be akin to finding a needle in a haystack. You need to be careful. Some professional indemnity policies may exclude your key activities, others may have prohibitive excesses. If you work abroad, does the policy cover international territories? 

To ensure you get adequate protection, it pays to read the policy fine print. One thing you should always look out for is if the policy is written on a 'Aggregate' or 'Any One Claim' basis. Insurance jargon yes, but what do these terms mean and why are they important ?

Here's the difference

An 'Aggregate' Policy

If a limit of indemnity is stated to be 'in the aggregate' insurers will pay up to the limit of indemnity during any one period of insurance in respect of all claims that are made. 

Eg; If the limit of indemnity is £2,000,000 and a claim is paid of £500,000 the limit of indemnity reduces to £1,500,000 for any further claims made during that period of insurance.

An 'Any One Claim' Policy

If a limit of indemnity is stated to be "any one claim" insurers will pay up to the limit of indemnity in respect of each claim or series of claims arising out of any one event however many claims there are during a period of insurance.

Eg; If the limit of indemnity is £500,000 and a claim is paid of £250,000 the limit of indemnity remains at £500,000 for each of any further claims that are made during that period of insurance.

As you can see, an 'any one claim' policy provides much more protection as you have no chance that the policy will 'run out' of insurance like an 'aggregate' policy could. So when your next on the hunt for professional indemnity insurance, always go for a 'Any One Claim' policy - otherwise you could end up having to pay all or part of a claim personally.