Web Designer & Developer Insurance
A website is somebody else's shopfront. When it breaks, goes down or loses orders, the client's loss may relate to business interruption, lost sales or remediation costs rather than the development fee itself, and a site built for a few thousand pounds can support a business turning over considerably more.
The exposures in this work are mostly about other people's material. Images, fonts, text and code all arrive from somewhere, and copyright claims over an image used without the right licence are a potential source of claims and demands in the sector. They are cheap to bring, arrive as demands rather than court claims, and the developer is usually the one who selected the asset.
Two areas have grown recently. Accessibility complaints under the Equality Act are being raised against commercial sites, not just public sector ones. And sites taking payments or holding customer accounts put the developer in the middle of a data exposure they do not control after handover.
We can advise web design and development businesses on professional indemnity, cyber cover and the ongoing exposure created by hosting and maintaining sites after they go live.
Common claims and risk exposures
The exposures that produce claims in this trade, rather than a generic list.
Copyright in images, fonts and content
A common claim in this work. An image used beyond its licence, a font embedded without a web licence, or copy lifted from elsewhere. Demands arrive from rights holders and agencies acting for them, and the client looks to whoever chose the asset.
Site failure and lost trading
A broken checkout, a failed update or a site down during a campaign. The client's claim is the revenue lost during the outage, which on an ecommerce site can be quantified precisely from the previous week's figures.
Third party plugins and themes
Most sites are assembled from components the developer did not write. A vulnerability in a plugin, or an abandoned component that stops receiving updates, becomes the developer's problem because the developer chose it.
Accessibility
Claims and complaints that a site is not usable with assistive technology. These arrive against commercial sites as well as public sector ones, and the remedy is a rebuild rather than a payment.
Payment and customer data
Where a site takes payments or holds accounts, a breach involves the client's customers. The developer's role in how the site was built and secured is examined immediately, particularly where hosting and maintenance continued after launch.
The cover we arrange
We arrange professional indemnity and related insurance around the services you provide, the clients you work with and the contractual requirements you face. The appropriate cover and limits will depend on your individual activities and the terms available from insurers.
Professional indemnity
Claims arising from negligent design, development and advice, including site defects and errors in the build. The activity wording needs to cover maintenance and hosting where you provide them.
- Negligent design and development
- Site defects and build errors
- Maintenance and support where provided
- Defence costs included
Intellectual property infringement
Cover that answers one of the more common claims in this sector. Unintentional infringement of copyright in images, fonts, content and code used in a client's site.
- Images and stock licensing
- Font and web licence breaches
- Content and copy
- Unintentional infringement
Cyber and data
Attacks on your own systems and on sites you host, plus breach response and notification. Where you host client sites, an attack on your infrastructure is your incident as well as theirs.
- Hosted sites and your own systems
- Breach response and notification
- Ransomware and restoration
- Business interruption
Public liability and equipment
Injury and damage arising from visits to client premises, and cover for the equipment the business runs on, whether that is an office or a home setup.
- Client meetings and premises
- Equipment and devices
- Home working where relevant
- Employers' liability with staff
Run off
Continuing cover after the business stops trading. Sites carry on running after a developer moves on, and a copyright demand or a breach claim can arrive years later.
- Continues after you stop trading
- Sites keep running without you
- Commonly six years
- Cheap relative to a live policy
What an underwriter will ask
Having these to hand shortens the process considerably, and usually improves the terms.
- Income split between design, development, hosting and ongoing maintenance
- Whether ecommerce or payment functionality is built, and which platforms
- Whether sites are hosted for clients, and on whose infrastructure
- The largest client by turnover, since their trading loss is your exposure
- Where images, fonts and content come from, and how licences are recorded
- Whether accessibility standards are worked to, and whether they are stated in proposals
- Whether third party plugins are kept updated after handover, and under what agreement
- Claims, demands and notified circumstances over the last six years
What affects the cost of your insurance?
The main factors insurers consider when assessing the premium.
Client size rather than build fee
A site for a business turning over millions carries that business's trading loss. Insurers rate the clients served rather than the price of the work.
Hosting and maintenance
Ongoing responsibility for a live site extends the exposure past handover to every day the site runs, and is rated above build and hand over work.
Ecommerce and payment handling
Sites taking payments or holding accounts bring data exposure and a different regulatory profile, whether or not card data touches your systems.
Asset licensing discipline
Keeping licence records for every image and font used, per client, is the control that prevents one of the more common claims in this sector, and it is worth stating at presentation.
Conditions and exclusions to consider
Terms vary between insurers, so treat these as the questions to ask rather than a description of any one policy.
Deliberate infringement
Cover responds to unintentional use. Knowingly using material without a licence, including reusing an asset after a rights holder has objected, is outside it.
Guaranteed uptime or search ranking
Promising availability, traffic or a search position is a warranty rather than a professional duty. Ranking promises are the version of this that appears most often in proposals.
Unpatched components after handover
Where a maintenance agreement exists and updates were not applied, a breach through a known vulnerability is a difficult claim. Where no agreement exists, the position depends on what the client was told at handover.
The client's own hosting and decisions
Where the client chose the host, declined recommended work or made changes themselves, the chain between your work and the loss breaks. Written recommendations are what prove that.
Common questions
A photographer is demanding money for an image on a client's site.
That is a common claim in this line of work and it is what intellectual property cover is for. Do not pay the demand or quietly remove the image before notifying your insurer, because both can affect how the matter is handled. Send them the licence record if you have one, since that usually ends it.
The client's site went down and they want their lost sales.
Whether you are liable depends on what caused it and what you agreed to maintain. Their loss is quantifiable from their own figures, which makes these claims easy to put a number on, so your defence rests on the hosting arrangement, the maintenance terms and what you recommended in writing.
Are we responsible for a plugin somebody else wrote?
Often yes, because you chose it and deployed it. The question is whether selecting and maintaining it was reasonable, which turns on whether it was supported at the time, whether updates were applied and whether you had an agreement to apply them.
Do we need cover if we only build and hand over?
Yes. Copyright demands over assets you selected arrive long after handover, and claims about defects in the build do not stop because you are no longer involved. Since professional indemnity is claims made, the policy you hold when the demand arrives is the one that answers it.
How do I get a quote from True Risk Solutions?
Call 01304 262880 and speak to a broker, or email info@truerisksolutions.co.uk with what you do, what you need cover for and a phone number with the best time to call, and a broker will call you back. We need a phone number to quote, because the cover and the price depend on questions that are quicker to answer on a call than by email.
Speak to a specialist who understands your industry
Tell us about your business and the work you undertake, and we will come back to you with cover options built around it. Call 01304 262880, or email us with a phone number and the best time to call and a broker will ring you back.