Professional Indemnity Insurance (PI) is difficult to comprehend. However, I’ve devised a guide to make professional indemnity insurance simple.

What is Professional Indemnity Insurance?
Professional Indemnity Insurance is a form of business insurance for professionals who are in industries where others may rely on their professional advice. By being regarded as an ‘expert’ in a field, others may seek legal action against you if they suffer a loss from your professional advice.

For example, if you are an accountant and are responsible for preparing and lodging your client’s tax returns, a failure to lodge the tax returns on time can result in interest and penalties for your client. Your client could take legal action against you for a breach of your professional duty.

Professional Indemnity Insurance may protect you from such action by covering claims made against you, including legal defense costs up to your specified amount of cover, and after taking into account your excess (of course, you would need to look at your policy wording to look at what specifically is covered).

Why Do People Hate Thinking About Professional Indemnity Insurance?
Professional Indemnity Insurance forms the largest percentage of your business insurance expenses. Typically, Professional Indemnity Insurance is a time-consuming process taking up to 12 weeks. Again, it’s expensive and most people don’t know if they are getting the best deal.

This is where companies like BizCover steps in to satisfy your Professional Indemnity Insurance needs. BizCover allows you to get live online quotes in under 2 minutes, and purchase in only a couple more. BizCover also allows business professionals to compare policies from leading insurance providers (AIG, Dual and Vero) to make sure that you’re getting the cover you need. By staying online, you are also benefiting from reduced pricing and costs.

So, make sure you visit BizCover Professional Indemnity Insurance for further Professional Indemnity Insurance info, and get a free 2-minute quote!

Home insurance companies treat older, more loyal customers with contempt

What’s the biggest risk of theft for our senior citizens? Muggers on the street? A break-in by a burglar? Neither. The worst daylight robbery is by home insurance companies, which treat older, loyal customers in the most shameful way.

As we have reported elsewhere, an extraordinarily loyal policyholder – 58 years with the same home insurer – was being charged £648 for cover that, if he applied as a new customer, would be £162. The company was RSA, but in truth it is behaving no differently to many other home insurers.

A colleague showed me his mother-in-law’s home insurance policy with Saga (she’d been a customer for years), which was charging £854. We soon found a policy for £200, and with better cover. Ironically, the new company is More Than, a subsidiary of RSA.

In March 2008, Guardian Money highlighted the case of accountant Robert King, who was quoted a home insurance renewal price of £551 by Direct Line, yet when he went to Direct Line’s website as a new customer he was quoted £173, again for a better level of cover. He had been a customer of the company for 10 years.

The financial services industry talks a lot about promoting customer loyalty. But these practices show their words are meaningless. What insurers do – completely legally, of course – is to charge whatever they think the market will bear.

Some older customers don’t have access to, or take no interest in, the internet. They don’t shop around on comparison sites. They believe they will be treated on the same basis as other customers.

Well, they’re not. Insurers know they can push up prices year after year, safe in the knowledge that most won’t quit for a rival. But although it’s legal, it’s certainly not fair. And it’s arguably in breach of new Financial Services Authority rules.

In December last year insurers came under the FSA’s new “treating customers fairly” regime. It sets out the “outcomes” that insurers must aim for. And the first principle that it states is: “Consumers can be confident that they are dealing with firms where the fair treatment of customers is central to the corporate culture.”

Are elderly home insurance customers receiving “fair treatment”? Judging by our examples, not in the least.

• Victory for the banks on Wednesday in the long-running court battle over charges was a shock. And so was the reaction among Guardian website readers when I wrote that maybe the outcome was not so bad for consumers.

I was pilloried by many as some sort of lying, ultra right-wing, silver-spoon out-of touch Londoner.

What had I written? That charges and penalties had been excessive; that many individuals had been unfairly charged hundreds of pounds after busting their overdraft limit by a few quid; that banks had bombarded customers with adverts for easy personal loans and cheap credit, then stung them when things went wrong.

But I also said the majority of customers don’t go overdrawn and don’t spend money they haven’t got. They would be the real losers if the banks had lost in court. How soon would free banking disappear as the banks sought to recoup their lost fees?

About 1.2 million bank customers were hoping for refunds. That suggests tens of millions were not. This case was never The People vs The Banks. It was about one group of customers who had in many cases been treated unfairly. But in righting that wrong, it wouldn’t be fair to pass on the cost to the prudent customer.

p.collinson@guardian.co.uk