Please note the following is a guide only and you must check your own specific insurance requirements with your insurance broker.
Public Liability
This protects you for claims made against the business by third parties alleging that you are legally liable for an injury they have suffered or damage to their property. This cover is normally referred to as general liability in the US.
Within a production insurance package, you can usually include public liability at £1m, £2m, £5m and occasional £10m with specific agreement from insurers. The level of cover is also normally any one claim.
Typically, as standard the policy will respond to claims relating to work undertaken anywhere in the world excluding USA and Canada. If you are shooting in either of these countries, you would need to notify us in advance and provided the shoot is non-hazardous, we can extend your policy to include $2,000,000 of public liability cover for the duration of the shoot.
Other insurers may work differently and/or exclude USA and Canada entirely.
Employers’ Liability
This protects the business from claims made by employees alleging that you are legally liable for an injury they have suffered. This covers not only formal employees of the business but also freelancers who are deemed to be under your care such as assistants, runners and work experience individuals.
Within a production insurance policy, insurers would typically include employers’ liability up to a limit of £10,000,000 any one claim.
Employers’ liability is a legal requirement in the UK and as a result, it only responds to UK law. If you are employing a non-UK national outside of the UK, you would be required to abide by local laws. For example, in the US, it is a legal requirement to have workman’s compensation insurance in place if you are employee personnel under US employment law
However, as a UK company, you may not be able to take out local insurance. To obtain US workman’s compensation you would need to have US Federal ID Number. As a result, if you are ever hiring non-UK nationals for a shoot outside of the UK, we would advise that they are hired through a local production company where possible.
Alternatively, you can invoice them for their professional services. This would mean that they would legally be considered to be a freelancer and then any injury claims they make against you would be covered by your public liability insurance.
Production Packages
In addition to the liability cover noted above, a typical production production insurance policy also covers your equipment, hired equipment, props, sets and wardrobe and reshoot cover under the following sections:
- Cast – Cost to reshoot following loss of anyone essential to the shoot (in your budget due to death, accident or sickness only.
- Production Media – Cost to reshoot following loss physical loss of, damage to, or destruction of production media.
- Extra Expenses – Cost to reshoot following loss of or damage to essential equipment, props or location.
Normally the premium would be calculated on your gross estimated annual shoot budget/spend, and then include a maximum any one shoot limit.
For example, a policy would be based on
- Annual estimated shoot budget – £1,000,000
- Allowing a maximum any one shoot budget of £250,000
The production policy will not cover damage to rented vehicles as in the UK that would be covered under a motor insurance policy. In the US, production policies will often include cover for non-owned and hired auto liability.
You may have requests from clients for commercial producer’s indemnity insurance which we can provide quotes for if required. CPI cover offers broader cover as it covers non-appearance of crew due to any reason beyond your control. This would include instances such as not being able to travel due to adverse weather, wild cat airline strikes, ash clouds and road accidents.
Some media production and CPI policies do exclude non-appearance of models / talent as insurers can expect this to be the responsibility of either your client or the advertising agency to insure. If you need cover for non-appearance of talent for a specific shoot, we can ask the insurers to extend your policy to include this for the duration of the shoot.
Professional Indemnity
Professional indemnity insurance cover claims made against the business alleging that you have been professionally negligent. This can include claims from clients who are unhappy with the services you have provided, unintentional breaches of contract and copyright infringement.
Production companies would typically purchase a minimum of £1,000,000 Professional Indemnity, however many will purchase £2m or £5m depending on the size of their business. The cover is typically provided on an any one claim / complaint basis.
Professional indemnity policies usually exclude claims in USA/Canadian courts of law. If you are working with USA clients and/or the media which will be distributed worldwide it would be sensible to consider a USA/Canada extension to your policy. Typically the limit of indemnity is aggregated for claims brought under US and Canadian law. This means that the total amount the insurers will pay during one period of insurance for claims brought in the US and Canada is limited to lower level such as £500,000 or £1,000,000.
Travel Insurance
The policy primarily covers medical expenses, repatriation and emergency travel expenses incurred by any insured individual whilst they are travelling (usually up to £2,000,000, but in some cases as much as £10,000,000). The policy does also provide cover for other costs incurred whilst travelling such as trip cancellation and disruption, lost luggage and personal liability.
Typically, high quality business/production travel insurance policies will naturally offer worldwide cover, however most policies will exclude travel to areas to which the foreign office advises against travel to.
Please also remember that if you have assistants or employees travelling with you, you have a duty of care towards those persons. As such, you must also ensure adequate travel insurance is also arranged for anyone that is travelling at your request.
Other insurance information:
Ad Wraps / Ad Agency Policies
Ad wraps are policies that are taken out by advertising agencies or large brands that provide cover for an entire shoot. The Ad Wrap policy just combines the covers provided in the ad agent’s and commercial producer’s policies and historically tends to be sold to the client. This ensures that they do not get the ad agency and production company marking up the insurance costs in their budgets and it gives them control over the covers.
Ad agent’s policies will typically provide cover for extra expenses the ad agency incurs due to an adverse event happening that is beyond their control. This includes non-availability of the talent that they are contracted to provide on the shoot if they were unwell or could not get to a location for some reason. It would also include any property / product they are contracted to supply, such as a hero car on a car commercial.
It also provides cover if due to an adverse event, the advert is rendered counter promotional and must be reshot, but as standard this only applies to non-celebrities.
They can also have props, sets and wardrobe cover added if there is product to insure and film negative in postproduction as the negative / media is usually passed from the production company to the ad agency to complete the edit. The responsibility of the ad agency and production company are set out in the APA/IPA PIBS (Production Insurance Briefing Specification).
Cyber Insurance
Cyber insurance covers a wide range of costs you may incur if you are the subject of the cyber-attack. These include but are not limited to the following:
- Costs to reimburse clients if they suffer losses as a result of your systems being breached.
- Your loss of revenue if you have to cancel shoots due to your computer systems being down.
- Your costs to get your systems back online.
- Cyber extortion cover where insurers will pay the criminals who have accessed your network in return for them allow you access to your system or not releasing potentially harmful information (e.g. client data).
Cyber policies will often also include an extension for cyber-crime which covers theft of money from your accounts. This could be as a result of a cyber-attack or by social engineering which is when criminals manipulate individuals into making payments into fraudulent accounts. It will also cover costs to reimburse clients if you are impersonated and clients make a payment to a fraudulent account.
If you are interested in obtaining cyber insurance, let us know as we have a number of insurers who are able to provide this cover.
Additional / Named Insureds
If you are doing shoots in the US or Canada, it is common for clients, locations, advertising agencies and hire companies to request to be listed as either an additional insured or named insured on your public liability insurance. Hire companies may also request to be listed as a loss payee.
If you have a request of this nature, just let us know in advance of the shoot and we can arrange for this to be actioned and we will provide you with documentation you can provide to the relevant entity confirming this.
