Professional indemnity insurance?

[thing1andthing2]

Have any of you got this insurance, being self-employed? I am working a few hours a week as a medical writer (writing up trial results for pharmaceutical trials) on top of another part time job. I have a new contract which could be very lucrative, but they are insisting I have professional indemnity insurance. This is, I guess, because if I make a mistake which affects the results, I could be sued by the pharmaceutical company.
It seems very difficult to find the right thing and one company has quoted me over £360 for what I want. All the forms I am being sent seem to be for small companies rather than for self employed people. As I expect my turnover to be less than £5000 this year, £360 seems a lot of money.
Do any of you have this insurance, who do you source it from and how much does it cost?
Thanks very much!

We do have professional indemnity and I think we were quoted £300 or so. It seems like a waste of money, but one client required it.

I get mine through my professional body
its a PITA but a LOT cheaper than ever being sued

That sounds like a lot, try a comparison site. Is there a professional association for medical/technical authors?

Personally I wouldn't do anything in my own name that I could be sued for - is it worth putting your home on the line for £5,000 a year?

Oops that wasn't very clear - should have said:
Personally I wouldn't do anything in my own name that I could be sued for - is it worth putting your home on the line for £5,000 a year rather than working through a comany you can walk away from?

Thanks for your replies. I don't have a professional body because I'm just doing it a couple of hours a week and as a favour for a company I used to work for. It's useful to know someone else was charged the same amount.
I think as this contract could be £4500 over 6 months, spending less than 10% on the insurance still makes it worthwhile. I might see if I can negotiate a slight increase in price on the basis of them demanding the insurance.
I've tried various websites/insurance brokers and they are all umming and arring because they haven't come across my situation before... hopefully I'll get something concrete from them soon.

I got a quote last year for myself and it included good levels of pub liability and prof ind insurance. It was around the £200 mark for both. I have messaged you the link of the company

Thanks ugt. The company you used won't insure me because I'm working with the pharmaceutical industry. I've just (finally) been quoted £726 for £250,000 cover which seems like a joke. I nearly fell off my chair.
They must think I'm super high risk.
Hoping another broker will come back with another quote soon.

I should try and negotiate the level of cover down with the company you are working for, although I don't know if £250,000 is the norm in the pharmacutical industry. £100,000 is a common base level of PI which should result in a substantial reduction in premium. If the company insist on £250k, say 'OK but my normal level of PI is £100k' and ask them to pay an additional fee to cover the difference.

I'd still use a company though - you really don't want to see a summons in your own name land on your doormat even if you do have cover for (your share of) the enormous legal fees that pharma cases rack up.

I've finally understood what you're getting at MrAnchovy. You're saying to register my business as a company rather than working as self-employed. I think the chance of me being sued is so vanishingly small that I can't be bothered. The client needs 60 patient narratives writing a week and I've offered to do 3 or 4 a week, and the narratives don't have any bearing on the results of the trial, so it really is quite low risk work. Everything I do is checked by a medical reviewer as well and comes back to be finalised.
I told the client I was having difficulty sourcing the insurance and it was very expensive and they basically said "suck it up, it's your responsibility" (well not actually, especially as we were talking in French).
It's such a PITA.

We run an actuarial practice and have had truly eye watering PI quotes in the past (£3k+) - usually because a broker didn't understand our business and thought we were a pensions consultancy. It's worth trying several companies and seeing if you can talk to the underwriters yourself. Sometimes if you can talk them through what exactly you do they can assess your risk downwards.

We now have £2 million cover for less than £500 a year.

I have had similar experience and have still not resolved it. I am a medical writer too, occasionally for pharma, but not high risk (article summaries, news items, all referenced to the primary source), and some more general stuff for non-pharma organisations including patient information. One client, a university, insisted that I accept liability for their costs if HMRC queried my self employed status and wanted me to insure against this. As I am part time and have been self employed for years, this seemed so unlikely that in the end I just took the risk.

I would like to find some reasonably priced indemnity insurance though, that doesn't assume I am writing up trials!

If anyone has found a good company then I'd love to hear about it.

The wife and I are freelance IT consultants. My agent ticks the box by telling me I need to have insurance in place. The wife's agent insist on seeing the paperwork. As a result, she has cover and I don't. She pays about £31/month. I'm guess that the pharmaceutical industry is more litigation orientated hence the hefty premiums.

I've been doing this for 23 years and I've never known of a IT consultant being sued. One guy lost the company £700k and all that happened was that he didnt get his contract renewed.

Maybe you should ask around to see how common/uncommon it is for people in your position to get sued. However, if like my wife's agent your client requires paperwork then you have no choce but to 'suck it up'

I use Hiscox and am generally asked to provide PI for £1,000,000 - fecked if I know why being a PM in financial services :-) Anyway sometimes need public liability too (500k) so all in I am around £300 per annum.