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When do I need business insurance as a Virtual Assistant?

Virtual Assistant insurance

Are you working as a Virtual Assistant and found yourself wondering, “when do I need business insurance?”

We’re only human, we’re supposed to make mistakes, or so the song goes! Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could leave it there. But a mistake in business could have a cost attached. So what then?

I recently ran a couple of polls on my Instagram account. The result of which had me wanting to write this blog to raise awareness of something I personally consider to be a business essential – Virtual Assistant Insurance!

In my poll I asked Virtual Assistants if they had insurance ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Around a third of Virtual Assistants who responded answered ‘no’!

I get it – no one wants to think the worst

There is a lot to think about when setting up a business – something covered in my Virtual Assistant training, especially if it is your first foray into being self employed. It is just you navigating all the marketing, finance, legal requirements ……..and then the actual client work!!!

Everything is exciting, positive and new, and insurance, well judging by my Insta polls, it is not being considered. I am guessing it is for one of three reasons:

– You don’t even know it’s a ‘thing’

– Your funds can’t stretch to it at the moment

– You don’t want to think the worst of your fledgling business

I’ll let you into a secret, I never had any insurance to begin with either. I started up doing Virtual Assistant work as a bit of a side hustle on maternity leave. I felt like I was playing at it, testing the waters and the thought, “do I need business insurance?” never crossed my mind.

When I started with my first major regular Virtual Assistant job for a client five years ago, the stakes felt much higher. The clients she and by association, I, was doing work was at a national level.

After a couple of silly mistakes whereby tweets about events went out after the events had happened, as I had not deleted them from a set that were scheduled to keep going out on repeat, it got me thinking and to be honest, worrying about what could happen if I made a mistake which cost her either in reputation or financially. I needed to look at Virtual Assistant insurance UK.

So what could happen?

I’ll let PolicyBee explain the ins and outs of this!

Why I chose PolicyBee?

After having done my research it felt like they knew and understood the role and the industry, plus the potential pitfalls really well. After reading a number of articles on their website and their client feedback, I felt reassured so ran a quote and was impressed at the affordability.

Their Virtual Assistant professional indemnity insurance defends you against claims of negligence, breach of confidentiality, dishonesty, libel and slander. Also with the option to add public liability and legal expenses on top.

I have been with them for a few years now and am delighted to have teamed up with them a few months ago when I launched my Virtual Assistant Course, to offer a 10% discount to my fellow Virtual Assistants. Just click this link or quote JET Virtual Assistant if you call them.

How to mitigate risk in the first place

Even with insurance in place, it is sensible to take steps to reduce risk associated with mistakes.

As a Virtual Assistant you are working for a client. So it makes sense to run your work by them wherever this is possible. This is to ensure you have understood, interpreted and met any briefs they set.

For example, a lot of my Virtual Assistant job description is in social media and so I will do all my client posts for the week and screenshot them all. I will then send the posts to them for approval before posting. Therefore if there is an issue or mistake with a certain post, I haven’t been the person with the final say. Plus I have records of Whatsapp conversations and email trails just in case.

In conclusion

Whilst this blog does not constitute legal or financial advice, and is not intended to be a substitute for legal or financial advice and should not be relied upon as such, I hope it has given you some food for thought!

I would certainly recommend checking out the PolicyBee website, including the articles under the ‘Advice, News & Know-how’ section!

Bear in mind that links to PolicyBee in this post are affiliate links. This means if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission. Keep in mind that I link this company and their product because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Disclaimer

This page contains affiliate links, which means I may earn advertising incentives/fees if you sign up through my links at no additional cost to you. By providing links to brands I trust, my website is helped to keep afloat. Thank you for your support!

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