Protect against legal bills with travel agent professional indemnity cover
People generally go to a travel agent to sort out their holiday in order to save time and money. The convenience and professional service provided by a company can help a family book a cost effective and enjoyable break. But this of course involves taking on quite a lot of responsibility, and if you make a mistake while arranging something for a client, you could end up on the wrong end of a legal claim. Travel agent professional indemnity cover is a form of insurance which protects against this by paying for legal bills so you can defend your case effectively.
For example, you could arrange a holiday for a company executive, who has to return to work on a certain date. If you made an error in the return flight arrangements, they may not get back to the UK for days or even weeks after they were supposed to return. This could have financial implications for the individual and the company, and may lead to a legal case. In such circumstances, a travel agent professional indemnity cover plan would pay for the costs of hiring legal help.
This is only one example, and a policy will normally also protect against things like unintentional defamation, the loss of a client’s important data or documents, and generally covers any kind of or omission, mistake, or act of negligence that might be made in the general conduct of the business.
When it comes to costs, you can agree an excess with the insurer which may bring down your premium. As with something like car insurance, you can agree to pay an initial level of fee before the insurer starts to pick up the bill. You then need to decide the limit of your policy, as insurance companies will not typically pay for an unlimited amount of legal costs. It is important to get this right, otherwise you risk being under insured. So a large travel agency with a chain of branches might want protection for millions of pounds worth of costs, while a very small independent firm with a limited client list may want something for hundreds of thousands.
This type of cover is usually fairly flexible, and this is because legal claims can be unpredictable. So, you could take an insurance policy after you have been trading for a few months, but then find a claim arrives which relates to something before your insurance was purchased. For these circumstances you can buy what is known as retroactive cover, which even covers you for something which happened before the insurance was taken out. However, you must not have been notified of the legal action after you bought the policy.
You can also select a run off period for a travel agent professional indemnity cover policy, effectively protecting you after your business has ceased trading or while you change to another insurer. This ensures there is no vulnerable gap in which you could face a legal claim which you might not be covered for.
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