business focus 27
What’s your biggest business fear?
It would appear that confidence in starting a new venture is sky high with a record breaking 581,173 businesses registering with Companies House in 2014
However, it’s not all worry free when a business begins trading or offers a new service or product.
Offering a service to paying customers brings its own anxiety with so much riding on a good reputation, not to mention the newfound liability that comes from giving professional advice.
A recent study by AXA revealed that 74% of business owners admit to worrying about making mistakes on client projects. That’s almost three quarters of businesses which fear the prospect of making a genuine error and the consequences.
Furthermore, 47% of business owners worry about staff providing bad (or inaccurate) advice. Offering professional advice is a huge part of many businesses, but simply using your training, experience and expertise doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll get it right every time, however good or noble your intentions.
The concerns for making these mistakes are clear with 24% confessing to being worried about client compensation claims, relating to bad advice. Sometimes it can be reputational or financial damage, but it’s clear the concern lies with the thought of having to provide financial compensation to make up for a mistake your company has made. Alternatively, what happens if you want to argue that the mistake doesn’t solely lie with your business, or need someone to do this legally on your behalf? Either way you’ll need professional assistance.
Our advice
Firstly, don’t panic. Hopefully if such an event does happen the compensation costs will be manageable. However, if you’d prefer to be in control of your own destiny, you can protect yourself by getting your business covered with Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII).
Content Guru named ‘Cloud Provider of the Year’
Content Guru has capped a highly-successful year by winning ‘Cloud Provider of the Year’ at the UK IT Industry Awards. The event – run by BCS, the Chartered Institute of IT and Computing Magazine – is the UK’s premier IT awards ceremony and the largest of its kind in Europe.
The gala ceremony took place at London’s Battersea Park Events Arena on November 18 and was attended by over 1,300 professionals from across the IT industry.
The ‘Cloud Provider of the Year’ category recognises products or services that deliver “measurable
benefit to end users in either a single, large organisation or for a variety of organisations through any mix of private or public cloud offerings”.
A judging panel of prominent industry experts selected Bracknell-based Content Guru as best-in- category after reviewing the company’s achievements with storm, its world-leading cloud contact centre and communications integration platform. Storm transforms the way organisations communicate, through leading- edge communications broker and services broker capabilities.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – DECEMBER 15/JANUARY 16
Although it sounds a lot more complicated than it is, essentially, it provides you with the peace of mind that any genuine mistakes that you make, won’t cost you dear.
When the future of your business and your stakeholders are dependent on the advice and guidance you provide to clients, ensuring you have adequate protection is critical. PII offers an essential financial safety net, covering the costs of defending claims and any damages which may be payable.
But still, 22% of businesses don’t have Professional Indemnity Insurance, which leaves them exposed to potential claims from clients who allege that a mistake has been made or bad advice has been given.
Finding the right policy
When finding the right PII policy for your business, it’s important to ensure that the policy meets the requirements of your business.
Jelf would recommend using a broker which understands your sector. Your policy should be individually tailored to your business needs and designed to take any sector specific risk into account.
Once you have identified the risks your business faces, you should check your policy takes those risks into account. For example covering a client refusing to pay for work they perceive does not fit the brief or a mistake made with calculations.
If you would like more information on finding the right insurance for you visit
www.jelfgroup.com
Details: Jeremy Wilson 0118-9551832
jeremy.wilson@jelfgroup.com www.jelfgroup.com
Jelf Insurance Brokers Ltd (Reg No. 0837227) is part of Jelf Group plc (Reg No. 2975376) and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Registered address: Hillside Court, Bowling Hill, Chipping Sodbury, Bristol BS37 6JX (Registered in England and Wales). Not all products and services offered are regulated by the FCA. JIB219.10.15 Source: AXAJIB219.10.15 Source: AXA
CEO Sean Taylor collects the award
Sean Taylor, CEO of Content Guru, commented: “I’m absolutely delighted for the team that we have received one of the IT industry’s top awards. Ten years ago we took the decision to invest
heavily in cloud services. The first six to seven years were a hard journey but the investment is now really paying off. 2015 has been our best year ever and 2016 is shaping up to be tremendous.”
www.businessmag.co.uk
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