Self-employed insurance

Professional indemnity is useful if your business offers a service or requires you to give advice to clients. If you make a professional error or give advice that is deemed negligent, you could be taken to court.

Professional indemnity insurance covers any legal and compensation costs you are required to pay. Clients will often ask to see proof of professional indemnity insurance before agreeing to work with a new contractor.

Public liability insurance covers you if you cause injury to a member of the public or accidentally damage someone's property. An example of this could include a customer slipping on a wet floor in your shop or office and hurting themselves, or causing damage while carrying out buildings works on a client's house. You'll be held liable for the claim if you have not taken adequate precautions to prevent any accidents or damage occurring.

This insurance also covers you if a customer or member of the public becomes ill or suffers an injury because of a product you have supplied. For example, if the heel snaps off a shoe someone has bought from you, causing them to fall over, or if a cupcake you sell at an event makes someone sick.

If the people in question pursued legal action against you, public and product liability insurance would cover the costs you are liable to pay. We can offer cover from £1 million to £10 million. Plus, we can cover costs to help you defend the claim.

Read more about public liability insurance

Employers' liability insurance is a legal requirement if you have employees. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule, which you can find out more about on our employers' liability page.

We'll cover you up to £10 million, as standard. This cover includes the legal and compensation costs you must pay if an employee gets injured or becomes ill because of the work they do for you.

Contents and stock cover is for businesses that supply goods or rely on specific equipment to run their business.

A seamstress would not be able to work without a sewing machine, a web designer would not be able to code without a computer and you may not be able to run your business without your trusty tablet.

Other general items that you might rely on for your business, like your office furniture or your shop tills, are covered by insurance. So, if your business contents are damaged by an insured event, such as fire or theft, your business can continue as normal.

If you sell goods, you can also insure them against damage or theft, whether they're raw materials or the finished article.

Our different cover options allow you to insure your business stock and equipment at your premises and when you're out and about. Whether you work at home, at fairs, in shared workspaces or visit lots of clients, we've got you covered. And when you insure stock at your premises or home (excluding bed and breakfast and tradesperson premises), you'll also get an extra 25% of stock covered for two months of your choice as standard, ideal for your busiest periods.

If there is an insured event such as flood or fire at your work premises, buildings insurance will cover the costs of repairing the damage, helping you get back up and running.

Equipment breakdown cover (for items forming part of the building) is included as standard. This will cover the costs of replacing or repairing things like your broken boiler and fire/burglar alarms, as long as the damage is not due to wear and tear.

Find out more about buildings insurance

If you experience a sudden and unexpected issue that causes damage to your home that makes it unsafe or uninhabitable, the home emergency 24-hour claims line is here to help. You'll have a certified contractor, such as a plumber, electrician, glazier, locksmith, or drainage engineer, at your home within four hours of registering your claim to secure the property or prevent further damage. You'll also have access to gas engineers, pest control services, and roofers. These services are excluded from the 4-hour response time. Extreme weather and remote locations may extend the response time.

There is a limit of up to £1,500, including VAT, per claim for call-out charges, labour costs, and materials for insured emergencies, such as plumbing, heating, or pest infestations.

You don't have to pay any excess. There's no limit on how often you can claim.

You can add home emergency to a Direct Line business policy for an additional premium, if you run your business from home and have home buildings insurance, home contents insurance, or business contents insurance on your policy. It's available only on new and renewal policies, and you can't add it mid-term.

Home emergency cover isn't currently available on policies that include commercial premises or tradesperson businesses.

Business interruption insurance offers cover if your workplace is unusable after an insured event such as a fire, theft or flood. Whether you run your business from home, an office, a shop, a client's location, or a shared workspace, business interruption insurance can help cover any loss of income until your business can operate at the same level as it previously did had the damage from the incident not occurred. If you need to temporarily relocate due to this damage, we may also pay for the relocation costs if it's economically viable.

If your main supplier or customer's premises get damaged due to an insured event and they can't trade, we'll cover any loss of turnover for your business. We can only do this once their insurer accepts the claim and manages the repairs to their premises. Similarly, if there's an incident, such as a fire, at a location where your business frequently trades, and you can't trade elsewhere, we'll cover the loss of turnover for the time the premises are unusable.

Business interruption will also cover you if key equipment that you use to run your business, like a laptop, is damaged or stolen, meaning you can't trade.

If you, an owner, partner, director, trustee, or other essential employee of your business die or become seriously disabled as a result of an injury caused by accident and violent means, and are unable to continue working, we'll cover the incurred costs, up to £25,000, to minimise any interruption to the business.

If you hold sensitive customer data, process payments online, or just want peace of mind, cyber cover could be a good option to help protect your business. Cyber criminals can catch you off-guard and trick you into doing something you shouldn't, like opening an attachment in a fake email or finding a way through your cyber security. If this happens and they get their hands on your data or access to your bank account, the impact on your business could be serious.

But, with our cyber cover, you can call the experts, 24/7. They'll help you to stay in business and recover in three ways following a cyber incident:

• Recover financially
  • Covering loss of business income.
  • Covering recovery costs, like fixing damage to your computer systems or data restoration.
  • Covering fines (where insurable by law) and compensation costs following a data breach.
• Recover your reputation
  • You'll get access to public relations and crisis management experts to minimise damage to your brand and business.
• Recover your systems and help prevent future incidents
  • Technical experts will help fix your IT issues and provide advice on how to prevent future cyber incidents.

Find out more about cyber cover.

Available on new and renewal policies for eligible retail, and office and professional trades. Cover is up to the limit in your policy schedule for all claims made in the year. You must follow our requirements for data backup, firewalls and antivirus protection. You'll find these requirements and all other terms and conditions in your policy booklet.

This covers the legal costs of providing specialist lawyers and taking action against many common legal problems, for instance disputes with suppliers or clients. Legal expenses cover can only be used if there is at least a 51% chance that the claim will succeed.