Insurance for psychologists and therapists who do more than just therapy with Catherine France

In this episode I talk to Catherine France who is an expert in insurance, and really helped me sort out my own insurance arrangements. We have lots of questions and anxieties around insurance, so I'm very happy to have her here today to answer some of the questions that come up when we're setting up in private practice and when we're thinking about doing more than just therapy in our practices.

The highlights.

How did you come to work in insurance?

• Catherine tells us how she came to work in insurance, focusing on small businesses 05:37

What insurance does an average psychology or therapy private practice need to have in place?

• Catherine takes us through the types of insurance we need to have in place, beginning with buildings, contents, and business interruption 09:36
• Catherine talks about public liability and employers liability insurance 12:16
• We discuss the big one: professional indemnity insurance 13:48

What level of insurance cover do psychologists and therapists actually need?

• We discuss the level of insurance you might need 17:08
• We talk about how increasing your insurance may not cost much more in premiums 20:47
• Catherine talks about insurance packages available for small businesses 22:04
• Catherine advises us to check whether our professional indemnity includes abuse cover 23:18
• I ask Catherine about critical illness cover and income protection 26:16

Do our insurance needs change if we start adding in digital products like online courses, blogs or ebooks?

• Catherine advises us on what to do to make sure our insurance keeps up to date as our business grows 29:25

What happens to our insurance if we have clients from overseas?

• We discuss why we need different cover depending on the location of our clients 33:28

Does our insurance have to change if someone from overseas buys a digital product from us?

• I talk about my experience of needing insurance to cover sales of digital products in the US 35:36
• Catherine tells us about why cyber insurance is important 38:41

Are there different insurance requirements for sole traders and limited companies?

• Catherine tells us about directors and officers liability 45:52

Do psychologists and therapists need different insurance if we offer training to corporates?

• Catherine advises us on what may be required 51:04

Where can people find you?

• Catherine tells us how we can get in touch with her 53:34

Catherine’s Links:

Website: https://www.catherinefrance.com

Instagram: @catherinefranceuk

LinkedIn: Catherine France

Twitter: @cathfrance

Blog: 10 Step Guide to Directors & Officers Insurance https://www.catherinefrance.com/post/10-step-guide-to-directors-officers-insurance-you-might-be-surprised-to-find-out-you-need-it

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TRANSCRIPT

SPEAKERS

Rosie Gilderthorp, Catherine France

Welcome to the Business of Psychology podcast, the show that helps you to reach more people, help more people and build the life you want to live by doing more than therapy.

Hello. And before we get into today's episode, I just wanted to give you a little update on what's going to happen with this podcast over my maternity leave, because if you've been listening for a while, then you'll know that from October the 14th, I'm going to be on maternity leave, probably coming back at some point in January, but no specified dates yet. But fear not! This podcast is one of my favourite things to do, and I really value you guys, as listeners. I don't think I tell you enough. I'm often told by people in my life that I'm not very good at giving compliments, and I think that has translated into my podcasting, and I don't tell you guys how much I appreciate you as much as other podcasters do, and I really do though. And as I said, I love recording this podcast, I love writing the content for the podcast, and I love doing the interviews. So the podcast shall continue. We've already recorded in fact, most of the episodes that are going to go out across my maternity leave. However, there will be some breaks. So in order to make sure we're giving you content consistently, we've planned to take a few breaks of just a week or two weeks here and there, where we're going to have a little pause in the content, just so that we can keep up with ourselves and make sure it keeps going through the whole maternity leave period. So the best thing you can do to make sure that that doesn't disrupt you and that you don't miss any of the episodes that we put out there is to make sure that you subscribe to this podcast. So whatever podcast app you use, whether it's Apple, Spotify, Google podcasts, or we're on Amazon now as well, you can click the subscribe button, and this podcast will be delivered to you every week, every week that we put one out. So please do make sure that you're subscribed so that you don't miss any of the episodes that we do put out there. Another thing that I'd like to encourage you to do, if you haven't done it already, is please please, please leave us a review. So you might have seen the podcast is starting to do quite well in some of the charts, and we're picking up a bit of traction, which is amazing. But the way that Apple decides how many people get to see this podcast is by how many reviews it's got. So please, if you haven't done so yet, leaving us a review on Apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts, it really makes a big difference to how many people can find us. So I'd really appreciate it if you could put the word out there for me just by leaving us a quick review. All right on with the episode.

Today, I'm here with Catherine France. And Catherine is a very useful person to know she's a friend of mine, but she's also an expert in insurance. And we have lots of questions and anxieties around insurance, Catherine. So I'm very, very happy to have you here today to answer some of those questions that come up when we're setting up in private practice and when we're thinking about doing more than just therapy in our practices. So welcome to the podcast, Catherine.

Thank you, Rosie. It's lovely to be here. And yes, you're right. I do love talking about insurance. But I'm hopefully going to allay some of your fears of your audience and, and kind of explain it in plain English. Definitely the plan.

Well, I should say from the beginning that Catherine has really helped me sort out my own insurance arrangements. I was super anxious when I started doing online courses, and I started offering coaching. And I was really scared about what would happen if somebody downloaded my course if they were abroad. So I had a consultation with Catherine a couple of years back now and it really helped me, and I don't think I would have grown Psychology Business School or any of that stuff without that consultation. So I think insurance is really important and also exciting.

That's very kind of you to say so, I don't think most people would find it very exciting. But I suppose we don't do ourselves any favours in the insurance business, and we can use a lot of jargon and we can make it seem very complicated. And I think what I enjoy doing from a communication perspective is taking it and explaining it in simple terms and explaining why people need particular types of insurance because I think you can think, you know, you can think you need all sorts of things, and that might be correct, but it could also be that there's things you don't need. So I think what we'll explore today are some of those the key themes and, and explain why people need different types of insurance. And as you say, whether you've got clients in the UK or overseas, you know how that might affect the types of insurance you need, and also for you, you know, you extend your business to sell, you know, other products or services as well. So yeah, we'll definitely get that covered.

Brilliant. So before we get into all of that good stuff, how did you come to work in insurance?

Well, I've never ever met anybody who grew up wanting to work in insurance. And I'm certainly not one of those either. I fell into it after university by answering a job in the local paper. And I joined a local insurance broker, and it really started from there. So I've probably got 20 years insurance experience now, which is a scary thought. And I've worked for local brokers, global brokers, I worked for a managing general agent at one point, which is very dull, and but I think the theme throughout my career is I've always kind of done an element of training and compliance as well. And I think, through sort of taking people through those things, it's, it's kind of spurred me on to try and help insurers do a better job of explaining what they do to their clients. So there's kind of two parts to my work, there's the work I do with small business owners, which is what I helped you with which is you know, taking, talking to them about what they do, and then what insurance they need to protect their businesses. And then the other half of what I do is I write content for insurers and brokers, so they can talk to small business owners in, you know, in ways that are much more engaging than the standard. I'm an insurance broker, you need insurance, please buy it. So. So that's kind of what I enjoy doing. And it's those kind of lightbulb moments, I suppose when people go Ah Yes! That's what I need, I now get it. And then they can skip off happily and arrange their insurance and feel confident that they're, they've got all the protection they need.

It's so important, because I do think that people either go one of two ways with their insurance, often, it's either bury their head in the sand and don't get the right insurance, because it's so difficult to understand kind of what they need. And that's obviously quite a dangerous and risky position to be in. Or equally, I see a lot of people that go the other way, and really over-insure and pay massive premiums to things that they're never gonna need. Just because it's like oh, I'll chuck money at it, make it go away. And so I think what you do really empowers people in their businesses, and this is very, very important work.

Yeah, I like how you put that. I'll have to write that down. But I think it is, it's, it's not necessarily, you know, a purchase that, you know, makes you feel warm and fuzzy, I suppose. It's, it can be a stress purchase, you feel like you've got to buy it, but I think when you understand it, you know, you, you work so hard to build a business, you know, as a business owner, that's your livelihood, it could be your pension, you know, not buying any insurance to protect, that just kind of seems mad. But on the other hand, you know, you, you buy insurance and with the hope you're never gonna use it. So it's, you know, unusual from that point of view. But when you do need to use it, you need to make sure that you've got the right cover and that those claims are going to get paid, and you know, that process is going to be as smooth as possible. So, so yeah, I definitely think it's worth everyone listening to this just sitting down for 5 or 10 minutes and thinking, right, what insurance have I got? Have I got, you know, have I got any? If I have does that actually, you know, hopefully from what they're going to hear, then they'll be able to say, yeah, I think that, I think that's right, or no, I need a bit more help or I need to, you know, I need to find out a bit more about some things so.

Excellent. So if we start then with a kind of average psychology or therapy, private practice. So this might typically look like somebody who sees clients either face to face in the therapy room, or sees clients online via a platform like zoom. But they're just offering one-to-one therapy sessions and maybe supervision to other psychologists and therapists. What kind of insurance do they need to be looking at?

Well, I think the main thing is probably the liability aspect of insurance. But having said that, it's probably worth going back to kind of the basics as well in terms of thinking, where are you working from? So if you're working from home, does your home insurer know you're running a business from home? So it's always important to tell them, they would consider that what's known as a material fact. So they would definitely want to know about that. Probably wouldn't change your premiums, but they just want to know that you're running a business from the premises. Or if you're renting a space or an office space, or you have a building you own that you work from, then it's making sure that you've got the insurance for that. And also your contents insurance, so business equipment, and contents that you might have. And any business interruption insurance, so if something happens, that stops you working from those premises, now, that might not apply if you're working from home, but if you've got an office or a building that you're working from then, then business interruption is definitely worth considering.

So that comes under the buildings insurance?

It does typically because it would be, it would be something that stopped you work in the premises. So if the roof falls in or there's a leak or a fire, and you can't work from there, then you typically need alternative accommodation to work from. Now, I work from home, I don't have business interruption insurance, because I can't I kind of assess the risk and say, well, actually, I could pretty much work from anywhere with an internet connection. So as long as I've got my laptop and my phone, I'm fine. I'm not, you know, there isn't going to be an element of lost earnings or anything like that really, in my business might, you know, if there's a leak at home, I might just stop working for a couple of hours, it's not, not a long period of time. Whereas with premises and things like that, it could be a lot more complicated, and you could be out of action for a longer period. So it's definitely something worth considering. And then we get really, get down to the liability aspect then, which is public liability, so causing harm or damage to another person. So if I came to you for a session, and I tripped over a cable in your office and sprained my ankle, and I can't work for a week, I probably come to you for some sort of financial compensation for that. At which point it'd be a claim against your public liability insurance. That could also be if you're working from home, it could be that the postman comes onto your property and trips over and exactly the same happens, it could be that you know, lots of people during lockdown have been using lots of online retailers for regular delivery. Certainly know I was, especially during the homeschooling phase. So you know, anything like that, you're responsible if they, those people injured them, or, or you cause damage to their property. So it's worth thinking about that, the potential exposure you've got there. It tends to be as well, when you buy public liability, you also get an element of product liability, which we might come on to slightly later because that might be helpful for people that are also selling products and employers liability. So if you've got any employees, then that's the one that you're legally obliged to buy, so it's definitely a must. But for your audience I thinks it's going to be professional indemnity insurance is going to be the one.

Yeah, that's the big one.

You're all probably required to have, although probably not legally, morally and professionally, it's definitely one to buy. So professional indemnity cover provides protection for accusations of negligence, if you've not done something properly, it could be malpractice, all those kinds of horrible things that we hope is never going to happen. I'm very, you know, fingers crossed, it won't. But it would cover the legal costs in defending a claim. So it could be that a claims made against you and you haven't done anything wrong. But you've still got to go through the process of, of defending it and report, responding I suppose. So, the insurer would do that on your behalf. Professional indemnity cover also usually includes things like libel, slander, defamation, and also copyright infringement which I think's really important if you're publishing work. I mean, that could be as simple as a blog, we've seen people who've tweeted something that has then become a court case. You know, if somebody thinks you've said something defamatory against them, or copied their work, then they could easily, you know, take offence and, and make a claim against you. So I think it's, it's really important to think about that. But am I right in thinking that there's a professional organisation that you're all members of that provide a policy for you? Is that still the case? I know, when we spoke...

No... so there's a couple, so we used to be regulated, so psychologists used to be regulated by the British Psychological Society, and they do have some recommended providers. So we tend, most of us will tend to look at who they're recommending and get our policy from one of those people, and they're sort of the big hitters. So you've got Towergate I think, Howdens?

Howdens, yeah I think Howdens is one of them.

Howdens, yeah. And, and Oxygen, who, that's the one that I'm with, but they're all underwritten by even bigger companies. So my insurance is actually Hiscox.

Ah, yeah, ok.

It's just calling itself Oxygen, which also calls itself Jelf, which is very confusing for everybody, but...

Yes, it's quite incestuous, the internet insurance world.

It's crazy, but, but yeah, so there are those, and those tend to be the ones that people look to. But actually, for other professions, like, you know, therapists, psychotherapists, I don't know that there is that kind of clear-cut, this is the place that you go.

I think they've probably got similar schemes. And I think what you benefit from is reduced rate. So you're paying less than if you just went out into the mainstream insurance market. Because I think you probably have quite high limits of cover, don't you?

Yeah. So this is something that I was going to ask you about actually, because you always get a choice, you can always go for I think it's like 1 million, 5 million or 10 million. And people often say to me, you know, what do we need? I don't know! So thought I'd ask you.

D'you what, I'd be on a yacht somewhere, if I knew the answer to this. So things like public liability insurance, they do, you tend to get 1 million, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million. And most people would probably go, you consider the amount of a claim that could be made against you, and then make a judgement about how much insurance you want to buy. It could be that contractually, you have a client who says you need to have 5 million pounds worth of public liability insurance.

Yes, I have come across that. Sometimes if you're working as a contractor for a company, they will demand that.

Yeah, and I mean, employers liability is usually 10 million pounds. It's kind of like an industry standard. I think the legal requirements lower, but the, the premium that you pay 10 million pounds is, is kind of a standard amount. But professional indemnity insurance is really difficult to know, purely because you're being asked to guess what the maximum financial loss is that you could cause if you do something wrong in your business. So you know, if there was a magic formula to say, yes, you take this number and times it by that and divide it by the number of letters in the name of your first pet. It'd be dead easy, wouldn't it? So I'd love to be able to say yes, you all need X amount of cover. But it is going through that, that thought process. So it could be again, it could be that contractually, somebody says right, you need to have 5 million pounds worth of professional indemnity insurance, 10, you know, whatever that is, so then you would make a decision that that, or build that cost of that insurance into the price of the work you do for them, you could to do that. Or you've really got to think about what is the most a claim is likely to be. If I worked with a client, would they want their money back? Would it be as simple as that? Do they want a refund? Do I have to put you know, is it going to be the cost of putting something right? So particularly where you know, not not in your line of work, but if it was an architect or somebody like that who'd done something wrong and it's going to be fixing it basically, so it's worth thinking about some of those things and thinking right well how how, how much is that likely to cost the person who's making the claim against me, I suppose. So yeah, sorry. It's a bit like a politician's answer isn't it?

Kind of impossible to know. And I always end up going in the middle.

Yeah. And well, I mean, the other one is, and it's, it's similar with cyber insurance is you buy as much coverage as you can afford, which, again, might not be a lot to some people, because they might just be starting out in their business. They might not be making lots of, you know, money, but it's worth having a look. And also, I think it's important as well, if you're getting a quote for professional indemnity insurance, and I do suggest people do this, is get a quote for several different limits of indemnity.

Yes, yeah.

Because I think if you've got a quote for a million, a quote for 2 million, and a quote for five, it's not logical that the difference in the premium amount is the same unfortunately, due to the wonderful way insurance works, it could actually, the difference in premium could be a lot, you know, a lot less than the ratio between the gaps if you see what I mean, I'm not...

Yeah, I've really noticed that. I did notice last time I renewed my policy, I did that because you gave me that advice a couple of years ago, and actually, the difference between 1 million and 10 million was very little on my premium.

Not 10 times the premium.

No, nothing like it, not not even double. Yeah, so I decided to go for that just because I was like, well, it's, it's not much, and it gives me a bit of extra peace of mind. And there are some contracts, which do require a higher level. And I don't know, maybe I'll go for one of those in the next year or so. So I thought it was worth it. So that's really good advice. But one thing I wanted to check out with you is, I might be completely wrong about this, but do they sometimes bundle up professional indemnity insurance and public liability?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. You could get a small business insurance package that would give you the option to include your buildings, business contents, cyber liability. So public liability, employers liability, professional indemnity. Absolutely. And also, then there's insurance that just do a package for the liability sections. So if you actually said, well I work from home and all that's included under my home insurance, you can buy a package that covers you for the liabilities as well. So I think that's definitely a good thing to think about, yeah.

Yes, it's worth having a look at, because I think the policy that I have with Oxygen is professional indemnity and public liability, it's definitely worth having a look and checking which sections are being covered by your policy if you don't want to pay twice.

No you don't. But also from an administration point of view, if you've got one policy that covers all the sections that you need it to cover, then that's just one policy that you've got to review each year, you've not got four or five insurance policies all over the place, which is, can be a little bit of a nightmare to look after, I suppose. The other thing I was gonna say with reference to professional indemnity insurance, which I'm thinking is probably relevant, is whether or not it includes abuse cover. Now I, back in my corporate account exec days, I looked after the Wildlife Trusts, which was really good fun. But one of the things that, because they used to run like children's groups for different wildlife trusts, and you could, you know, they'd do summer camps, you know, all things like that. So obviously, one of the things they needed as a charity was abuse cover. Now at the time, that was an addition to their professional indemnity policy. So I do think it's worth people checking, it does mean reading an insurance policy, so apologies for that. But it is worth checking to see whether that's something that you think could be a risk, you could be at risk of an accusation of abuse, and checking whether that's included under your policy. And if it is, you've got the cover, if it isn't, or it's specifically included under the exclusions, whether or not you need to add that back into the policy.

Okay. And does that cover all kinds of abuse?

I think it, well you would need to check. I think it'd be difficult to know because some, yeah, they're very different, differently worded depending on which insurer it is, so it'd be fairly difficult to say without having a look. But some of the other things that aren't included under a professional indemnity policy would be things like, you know like, if you did something deliberately wrong, if you knew something was going to happen, because obviously insurance is based on the fact that it's fortuitous, and you don't know that it's going to happen, and they tend to exclude things like terrorism.

Try not to engage in that people!

Definitely a bad. And things that are better insured elsewhere. So a professional indemnity policy wouldn't cover, you know, anything to do with motor vehicles, boats, employees, damage, you know, injury to people, because they're covered under other policies. So there, it's quite quite specific. So I think it's always worth having a check. As I said though, that does involve having to read an insurance policy.

I know, but we all know we probably should. You're paying for it, you probably should read it shouldn't you.

I know, they are contracts at the end of the day. So yeah, we do. I think we all, I think up our responsibility as the insurance industry is to make them easier to read. But yeah, we're working on that one.

One woman is going to change all of that. And that is Catherine.

I've got two children too, so it's tricky.

A couple of policies I've heard people talk about and recommend, but I don't know too much about, are critical illness and income protection. So I do have critical illness cover, I actually took it out when I was still working in the NHS, because a good friend of mine developed multiple sclerosis, and it was a real shock. And she needed to stop work quite abruptly. And she did have a critical illness policy in place. My understanding is that paid out a lump sum, which effectively paid her mortgage and took that pressure off the family. I learned from that and decided to get my policy when I was very young, which is good, because it's cheaper when you're very young. So I do have that in place. But what I see people talking a lot about is income protection. And I don't know how that, those things are different. How they work?

I'm going to be totally honest, I am not entirely sure, either, because they are the sorts of products that you would buy from a financial advisor.

Right.

Rather than, now whilst they're obviously backed by insurers as pensions are and things like that, yeah, you tend to go to a financial advisor for that. But you're quite right, definitely, I've got a critical illness policy, and life insurance and all the other things that you have to get when you get to a certain age, and you have a mortgage and all those other lovely things. But yeah, the difference between income protection and critical illness, I don't know if there's any overlap or not. So I could certainly dig some information out and you can link to that in your notes. But I wouldn't, I'd definitely not be qualified to give a more detailed answer. I'm very sorry.

No, it'd be great if you could find something out. Because I have this scepticism, natural scepticism about income protection. Because what I believe it's supposed to do is payout if, you know for some reason you can't work, so they take the average of what you earn normally as a self employed person, and pay it to you. But I just can't help but feel like there's probably tonnes of exclusions that mean that anything that actually happened to you they wouldn't pay out. But that is just me being a natural cynic.

No, no, no, not at all. I think it's always good to, to approach these things cautiously. But I mean, and I'm literally just kind of thinking out loud is I wonder whether the difference is the illness part. So it's income protection protects you if you were made redundant or couldn't? I don't know. I'm not sure, but I'm just wondering whether that might be one of the differences between them.

Maybe. But we'll dig out some more info on that. Because I have seen it talked about in some of our professional groups lately. Who're advising people to get income protection and I thought, oh, I wonder if that's worth having in addition to...

Yeah, no people have asked me that in the past as well, and I've pointed them to a financial advisor, but I'm sure I've got something somewhere, so let me dig that out.

Oh, thank you appreciate that. And so we were gonna talk about how your insurance situation might need to change if you start doing different things in your business. So let's start with digital products. If we start adding things like online courses or ebooks into our business, then would our insurance policies need to change?

I think as you grow or your business changes, then it's always worth reviewing your insurance. insurance policies may have a certain level of flex built into the policy. So if your, the amount you've bought, insurance bought for grows by 20-25% or something, then the policy may allow for that, you'd have to check. But it's always worth reviewing it and adding, you know, ringing up your broker or your insurance saying, right, I'm doing this now, what does that mean to my, you know, do I need to increase cover or...? You know, it's a bit like if you bought a new piece of kit, or you'd add it on, or, you know, you buy a new computer, or you'd need to add that on to your policy. So I think that's important. Now, the digital products and courses, I'm guessing, you can correct me if I'm wrong, are giving people general information? They're not specific... are they tailored advice? Is it similar to having a session? I suppose it's what, what's the level of risk involved if I bought one of those digital products, downloaded it? What, what would happen if I don't know, I didn't think it worked? Or I didn't... do you know what I mean, it's thinking about what that possible, what that risk could be to the person downloading it? I mean, I might want my money back, I suppose.

Yeah, I mean, this, this, I suppose, but it's complicated, because there's two types of course, y'know broadly speaking, that people might out there. The first type is a type that has a live element to it. So you might create, you know, a series of videos people engage with, that then also have a live weekly call where they can come and ask questions, and get more of that specific and tailored advice. And then there are other courses, which will be completely passively consumed, just videos and written materials. And that would be more generic advice where you're not, you'd probably have disclaimers on there saying this isn't therapy, I don't know your personal situation, this is just helpful for everybody. So I suppose the kind of complaints you might get would be quite different.

Yeah, they will, they can be wide and varied, as I'm sure you're all aware. But I think that's, then that's kind of a case of making sure that your business description includes the fact that you provide digital courses or downloads. So particularly if you're professional indemnity insurance, but I see across the board that how you describe what you do to your insurer needs to include all those activities. So it's your face to face counselling, you know, your mentoring, talking at events, it's making sure that you include those in that business description. And make sure that they understand that that's part of the service that you're providing.

Yeah, and actually, I found when I've done that, again, off the back of your advice, it didn't put my premiums up. Which was kind of remarkable, because I thought what?! I'm doing all of this stuff that I didn't do last year, and yet it all seems to be covered under the same bracket.

Yeah, so I think it's just the awareness and making sure that they know, you know that they know what you're doing. And one of the things that they are likely to want to know is, is where your clients are.

So this is the big one, isn't it?

Yeah. So this is the biggie and this is because our friends in America are much more likely to sue each other than we are over here. So insurers will want to know when, when you take out professional indemnity insurance, but also when you take out public liability insurance, because one of the things they tend to ask you then is what your turnover is. And they are probably going to ask you that for your professional indemnity or they want to know your fees or you know, your feeling curve and how that is structured. So if you're sitting there thinking, Oh my God, I've got no insurance whatsoever and now I think I need all of those things they just talked about, one of the things to think about is your, is your turnover, but also how that's broken down. So is that 100% earned from clients that are in the UK, or are 50% of your clients in the UK and 50% are in North America, or it could be that you know, they're split across America, Canada, Europe, and then they... they kind of have the main categories are UK, USA and Canada, Europe, rest of the world. So, and they do that so they can calculate how much of a risk it is. Because the stuff in the USA and Canada is they just perceive to be higher risk because there's more chance of a claim being made against you purely because of the litigious nature of their society. You know, they do a lot of that, suing each other. So yeah. So it's definitely something to consider. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't necessarily let that put anybody off. It's just how the, the premiums and the prices are calculated.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I would say that it reflects my experience. Because I found that when I started putting out digital products, some of them were being sold to people in the US. I think this is actually when we had our first conversation, I was like, Oh, no! Somebody in the US downloaded one of my ebooks? Oh, no. So I did have to have that conversation with Oxygen. And it did double my premiums to have that. But actually, I decided that was going to be worth it, because I anticipated that part of my business growing. And it has done. I don't have loads of clients from the US, I don't have any therapy clients in the US, that would not be covered, because we're not licenced in their particular state, which is another whole complex professional issue that I do occasionally have coaching clients, psychologists and therapists who are based in the US from, from the US, and I do certainly sell some of my digital products over there. So I wanted to have that ability to do that in my business. So it was worth it. And all it took really was a conversation and they added it on, it's not usually automatically there for us in our professional indemnity policies, because they haven't quite woken up to the fact that a lot of us are producing digital content, which could be bought by anybody.

And that's a good point, because the policy will have the geographical limits written into the policy, which will, will automatically be British Isles, and probably limited to that, in fact, so it's definitely worth considering that. But I mean, for the same reason all, obviously all my experience in insurance is UK based. So I get, y'know somebody signs up to my mailing list or like, asks me a question, and I'm like, I'm sorry, I can't help you. It's like, I think I probably know the answer, but it's so differently regulated, and they call different types of insurance different things over there, so it's just like, no, I will stay in my lane and just stick to the UK. Thank you very much.

Yeah, very, very wise. But I think that will hopefully help a lot of people who may be are struggling to get off the starting blocks with creating digital products, because of that anxiety of not knowing kind of, you know, anyone could download it from any country really so, so it is about making sure your insurance company knows you're offering that and asking what it would be to add on all these other places. And actually, I added on all the other places, and my premium didn't go up very much. But yeah, a couple of quid, added on the US and it doubled. But like I said it was it was worth it. So, so have that conversation, I think is the message.

Yeah, I definitely think so. Yeah, there are you know, we are people and believe it or not insurance is a people business. So yeah, give them a call and have a chat through with it with them. Definitely. Yeah. Okay, so one of the things I feel like we haven't talked about is cyber insurance.

Yes. Yeah. This is important. When do we need that?

Well, I, I really, really strongly recommend anybody who has got a computer, a website, a mailing list, you know, even social media followings has cyber insurance. Because unfortunately, the number of small business owners that are being subject to you know, hacking, ransomware, data theft, you know, unfortunately it's growing, we are all targets, people want data, data is worth money, and people will steal it. You know, unfortunately they'll say, give us five grand and you can have your data back. Well, very rarely do you get your data back. You know, and that is stressful. I mean, I wouldn't know what to do, I would pick up the phone to my insurance and say I bought this policy, you sorted out. Which is precisely why I bought the policy because picking up the phone to an IT consultant or somebody and asking them to fix it for you is expensive. So cyber insurance is designed to protect you, should you be hacked for various, you know, ways that people can steal your data, if you left your laptop on a train, you know, all those kinds of things to protect your data. And that would cover the costs of making sure that your systems are secure, that if they are, you know if somebody is sat in your system, they are removed, they're gone, they can't get back in, you know, if they can restore the data, then they will. It can also cover things like reputational damage, because there could be a PR aspect to the fact that you've lost clients data, you know, people are you know, the whole GDPR, you know, that we all lived through, everybody is much more aware of who's got their data and what they're doing with it and how they're protecting it. So I think it's worth investigating. And I think like professional indemnity insurance as well, I think it demonstrates to your clients that you're serious about protecting their well being, their data, and, and, you know, you're, you've got all that, all that covered, I suppose. So yeah, I think, I think that's definitely worth having a look at. And again, it can be added on to a policy that you've already got, or it can be bought as a standalone insurance policy. I think that that, you know, that could just be what saves you when, if you know the worst happens.

Yeah, it sounds really valuable because I know, I very much advocate for and I hope that if you're listening to this, this is what you do. We tend to not secure anything on our personal machines, we tend to store all of our data in secure GDPR compliant Cloud Storage. I personally try and have no files on my laptop, partly because it can't handle any files. But also because you just don't want that data in your house, I think. You want it on a secure server somewhere that somebody else is responsible for. But would I know what to do if I got an email saying, oh, ConvertKit for example, my email marketing software has been hacked and all of, all of those securely held email addresses have now been sold. That would be a PR nightmare. You know, I've got like 5000 people's information on there, yeah, that would be terrible. And knowing that I could pick up the phone and say, what, what is my liability here? What should I do? What steps should I take? Is there anything that you can do? That is so reassuring to me, I'm so happy to have that.

It is definitely a peace of mind one because I think there are some real horror stories about what's happened, you know, some of the cyber attacks. A friend of mine worked for a, let's call them a luxury fashion outlet, as we probably shouldn't name them. And somebody got into their system of their, their email system. So the one that all the managers were using, CEO, everybody. So they got into his email account, and they didn't do anything for six months. They just sat there and watched the traffic coming in and out, in and out. And in that period, the business restructured all its payment authority sign off procedure. So the hackers were sat there and they had all the steps they had to go through to get payments signed off.

Oh my gosh. That's terrifying. My husband actually listens to a cybersecurity podcast. And so when he's home, I occasionally walk past the kitchen and just get a wave of nauseating terror about the kind of crazy things that people will do.

Well there was one I heard at a seminar I went to ages ago about people not changing passwords. So there was a brewery who had like a, an external programme that controlled how much beer was in all the, I don't know what they called, drums, kegs, whatever, they're those huge things like that that they keep beer in.

Barrel?

Well it was even bigger, you know, like when it's actually brewing in those huge things. And it was, I can't remember who, it was like a Siemens system or something like that, but they'd never changed the password. So a hacker just went in there and just literally put in password one, or whatever it was it worked and they emptied all the beer out and all went down the drain.

Oh my god, that is so sad. Also scary.

Yeah, change your password!

Yeah. Gosh. Wow.

Definitely. But yeah, it's, it's it, yes. The level of disruption those things can cause as well. I mean, you know, you know, people going offline and things like that. It's, yeah, it can be really disruptive, particularly if you know, if your website goes down, and that's your, your source of income.

Definitely worth getting cyber insurance. Take home message. One other thing I wanted to ask you about is are there different insurance requirements for sole traders and limited companies?

It's a very good question. Legally, I mean, there's no other requirement other than to make sure that you've got employers liability insurance. But actually, there are different types of cover. A one I wrote a blog, excuse me, a blog I wrote recently actually was about directors and officers liability. So if you're a limited company, and you have directors, senior managers, etc, they are personally liable if a mistake is made. So it's often assumed, incorrectly, that personal directors of a company are not liable for the mistakes. But this is a little bit scary, even in a limited company, the personal liability of the individual directors is unlimited.

Right. So does that mean like your personal professional liability? Or your financial liability?

Well, yes, that could, it could mean both.

Oh, God. Terrifying!

Yeah. So what a lot of people do is buy directors and officers liability if they're a limited company, which would then cover them for the financial costs of action taken against them, if they're required by law to to cover the costs, basically. So, so definitely for, for limited companies. Now, sole traders don't need to buy directors and officers liability, but they might equally want something like legal expenses cover should they have any, you know, any kind of accusations made against them, that could be like a contract dispute or something similar to that, where they've got that legal advice helpline, kind of at their fingertips to help support them through any of that. But I can definitely send you, I did write a, like I said I wrote a blog post about directors and officers liabilities, I'll send you the link for that, and people can have a read of that, because that kind of takes you through how you can buy it, who needs it, what it covers you against, what it doesn't cover you for, in much greater length than you probably want me to cover now.

No, that's great. And I'll definitely put that in the show notes, because a lot of us we started out as sole traders, and then we might become limited companies further down the track. And often, you know, I knew what, so mine is a CIC, but it's similar in terms of insurance, I think. So I had to, I knew I had to phone up my insurers and let them all know that we'd changed structure. And that was all fine. But I had no idea that there was separate cover that you could get for directors and officers liability. And I think that's really important to look into.

And that was pretty much the reaction I got when I wrote the blog, was people I didn't even know I could get this. Which, you know, is probably another good reason for me to actually repeat that and post it again. But yeah, it, I don't know, it's, it seems to me and then this might just be my, my opinion is in the insurance, like in commercial insurance, so kind of medium to larger businesses, it's talked about all the time, people buy it all the time, but people aren't talking to small business owners about it. It's like why are we not, you know, we're talking about professional indemnity a lot more which we didn't use to, you know, cyber insurance, which I'm telling anybody who will listen. Directors and officers, you know, there's these things that people need to know and then they can make an informed decision about whether they need it or not.

And I think there's a misconception that being a limited company provides you with more protection than it does. That it limits your liability in more ways than it actually does. So I think it's really important that we've talked about some of the things you're not protected for, and how you could get insurance to actually protect you.

Definitely. And also, again, it's that, the reputation as well. It's like people, people won't become directors of companies, unless the company has a directors and officers insurance policy, because they don't want to suddenly sign up for something and then, you know, lose their shirt as, as the saying goes.

Yeah, that's another good perspective, actually, if somebody invites you to become a director, I mean maybe that's a question you need to ask, you know, do you have this in place?

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah, that's really important.

A similar thing would be for trustees of charities and things like that. There's all sorts of different indemnities you can get for charity trustees and things like that. So yeah, definitely. Yes.

That's really helpful to know about. Okay. Last question, I promise. It's just come in to my head, but I know that a lot of people who will be listening to this will be starting to offer training, or consultancy perhaps, to corporate organisations. Is that something that needs to come under a separate policy? Or could our professional indemnity cover that if we just let them know about it?

Yeah, I think so. I don't think that you'd need anything different because your public liability would cover you if you're going into their offices to provide training and you, you know, poured coffee over somebody or cause damage or injury to anybody. They might ask you, you know, the contract might specify a certain amount of cover. And, again, the professional indemnity, they might want a specific level of cover. But as long as that's included in the description of your activities, and I can't imagine why it's any different going into, you know, a corporate business as it is to going into a small local one.

Yeah. I mean, that's reassuring. So I'm glad to finish on something reassuring rather than horror story.

You know, I don't think anyone should be put off by working with corporates, I think, yeah. There's a huge opportunity there for you guys to, to work with them. Definitely.

Absolutely. And then I think when I rang up Oxygen about it, the only thing they wanted to clarify with me was that I was not going to be giving this massive financial institution financial advice. I was like, no, probably that would be overstepping. If I was like, you know, what you need to do with your business plan, insert name of massive bank? Yeah, not not not something I was intending to do.

No, I try to stay away from that kind of thing.

And so you might need to clarify that with them over the phone but...

Well yeah, you might yeah. I'm not going to teach them how to do their own job.

Probably not. So Catherine, you've been super, super helpful. We've talked about all of the different types of insurance that people need to make sure that they have in their practice at different stages of their practice growth, which is brilliant. But I think there's probably going to be people listening to this, who want some more advice from you and want to track you down online. So where can people find you if they want to work with you?

Easily done. Yes, I am on Instagram as Catherine France UK. And I'm on LinkedIn as well. I do love a bit of LinkedIn, as Catherine France, and Twitter is @CathFrance, not normally shortening my name, but Twitter wouldn't allow it any other way. And my website is catherinefrance.com. So I will send you the links. There's a link on there to book in if you want to do a one-to-one if people need a little bit more help. They are £39 and we go through your bespoke needs and then you get a set of notes and the recording if you want it. But yeah, that tends to work well for people that do want something just a little bit more specific, whether they've got nothing at all or whether they're renewal’s coming up and they want to just check they've got the right cover. So yeah, feel free to drop me a line, it'd be nice to hear from some of you.

Yeah, and I really recommend one of Catherine's consultations. If you've got any anxiety about this at all, let Catherine take your anxiety away. It's fantastic.

I feel like a therapist myself now I'm like the insurance therapist.

Very similar role. So thank you so much for joining us today Catherine and sharing so much value. And I'm sure we'll have you back to talk some more about insurance and another time.

I look forward to that. Thank you very much Rosie. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Business of Psychology podcast. If you share my passion for doing more than therapy, then make sure you come over and join my free Do More Than Therapy Facebook community, where you can work on getting your big ideas off the ground with like minded psychologists and therapists. I'd also love it if you could leave the show a five star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. It will help more of the people who need it to find it. See you next week for more tips and inspirational stories to help you do more than therapy.