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 building works on a client's house.

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.

Employers' liability insurance is a legal requirement if you have employees. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule, which you can read more about here.

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

Contents and stock cover is essential 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.

Meanwhile, there will be other more general items that you might rely on for your business, like your office furniture or your shop tills. Insure your business contents so that if they're damaged by an insured event, such as fire or theft, your business keeps going.

If you sell goods, you'll want to insure your stock, whether that's raw materials or the finished article. If your goods are damaged or stolen, what have you got to sell?

Our different cover options allow you to insure your business equipment and stock at your premises, when you're on the move, or both. Whether you work at home, at fairs, in shared workspaces or visit a lot of clients, we've got you covered. And when you insure stock at your premises or home, 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 would 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.

Peace of mind, if you experience a sudden and unexpected issue, which can cause damage to your home, makes it unsafe or uninhabitable, home emergency's 24-hour claims line means help is never far away. You'll have a certified contractor, such as plumbers, electricians, glaziers, locksmiths, or drainage engineers at your home within 4 hours of your claim being registered, to make the property secure or prevent further damage. In addition, you have access to gas engineers, pest control services and roofers, but these are not subject to the 4-hour response time. Extreme weather and remote locations may extend the response time.

Up to £1,500 inc. VAT per claim for call-out charges, labour costs and materials for insured emergencies, such as issues with plumbing, heating or pest infestations.

There's no excess to pay and no limit on how often you can claim.

You can add home emergency to a Direct Line business policy, so long as you run your business from home and have home buildings insurance, home contents insurance or business contents insurance on your policy. It is available on new and renewal policies, it can't be added during the policy term.

Home emergency isn't currently available on policies that include commercial premises.

For more information click here.

Depending on the type of business you run, you might work from home, in an office, at your shop, a client's premises or a shared working space. If your working premises became unusable due to an insured event like a fire or flood, business interruption will cover the costs of relocating until it's fixed. It can also cover you for any lost turnover during this time if you've insured your premises or business property with us.

If your main supplier or customer suffers damage to their premises and can't trade, we'll cover you for the loss of business you'll suffer. Equally, if a market or fair that you regularly attend suffers a fire, we'll cover the lost turnover for the time you can't trade there. 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.

Our business interruption cover can insure you if you or one of your key employees becomes seriously disabled and is unable to continue work. We will 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 should be considered. Because cyber criminals can be clever. Catching you off-guard and tricking you in to 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 devastating.

But, with our Cyber cover, you can call the experts, 24/7. They'll be on it, helping 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 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.

Read more on Cyber cover here.

Available on new and renewal policies only. For Retail and Office & Professional customers only.

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.