Professional indemnity insurance for marketing and PR consultants

Reviewed by the Apex broking team · Last reviewed 2026-08-22 · Position stated as at August 2026

Why this sector is different

Most of the professions Apex works with are told what to buy. Solicitors have the SRA Minimum Terms and Conditions; architects have the ARB; accountants have the ICAEW, ACCA or AAT; surveyors have RICS. Marketing and PR consultancies have none of that.

The practical consequence is that nobody checks your limit except your clients. Agency contracts, framework agreements and public-sector tenders routinely specify a professional indemnity limit and sometimes a minimum period of cover after the contract ends. Those contractual requirements, not a regulator, are what usually set the number on your schedule.

The second consequence is that wordings vary far more than they do in regulated professions. There is no approved minimum wording to fall back on, so two policies described as “PI for marketing agencies” can respond very differently to the same claim.

What professional indemnity actually answers for

Professional indemnity responds to civil liability arising from the professional services you provide. In an agency context that generally means:

• Negligent advice and strategy. A campaign built on a recommendation that turns out to have been made without reasonable care.
• Errors in delivery. The wrong price in an advertisement, a missed regulatory approval, a media booking placed against the wrong brief, a mailing sent to the wrong list.
• Intellectual property infringement. Images, music, fonts, footage or copy used without the right licence, or a mark that turns out to conflict with someone else’s.
• Defamation and related media torts. Words published on behalf of, or about, a client or a third party.
• Breach of confidence. Client information that reaches the wrong place.

Whether all of those are actually covered depends on the wording. IP and defamation in particular are sometimes carved out of a generic PI form and sold back as extensions, or handled under a separate media liability policy. It is worth reading the definition of “professional services” and the exclusions together rather than relying on the product name.

Where PI stops and other policies start

Three overlaps cause most of the confusion in this sector.

• Media liability. Broad media policies are built around publication risk — defamation, IP, privacy, and the costs of getting content taken down. A PI policy is built around negligent advice. Agencies that publish at scale often need both, or a combined form.
• Cyber. If you hold client customer data, run their social accounts, or operate their mailing platform, an incident is a cyber event first and a professional liability question second. The two policies have different triggers and different notification clocks.
• Commercial contracts. Some agency claims are pure contract disputes about scope, fees and deliverables. PI covers liability for professional failure, not commercial disagreement about what was promised, and most wordings exclude the return of fees.

Limits, aggregation and run-off

The limit question in agency work is rarely about the size of your own business. It is about the size of the client whose campaign you are running and the value of what could go wrong. A small consultancy advising a national brand can carry an exposure out of all proportion to its fee income.

Aggregation matters where one piece of work touches many people or many placements — a wrong claim in an advertisement that runs across a whole campaign, or a data error affecting an entire mailing list. Whether that is one claim or many against your limit is a wording question, and it is the single most valuable clause to understand before you buy.

Professional indemnity is written on a claims-made basis. Cover has to be in force when the claim is made, not when the work was done, so ceasing to trade without run-off cover leaves historic work unprotected.

The rest of the estate

This pillar is an index. The pages below go deeper on individual questions.

• PI insurance for marketing and PR consultants — the core product page.
• Marketing consultants PI insurance guide and PR consultants PI insurance guide.
• PI versus media liability — which policy answers which claim.
• Defamation and brand reputation claims against PR consultants.
• IP and brief-error claim examples and contract performance disputes.
• Claim examples for PR consultancies and how much cover PR consultants need.
• Cover for newly established PR consultancies and PI for marketing agencies.
• Bridgehouse Marketing v Wachsmann — aggregation in a marketing context.

See also

• All sector pillars — the ten profession pillars we maintain
• Professional indemnity insurance — how a specialist PI broker works
• PI vs media liability — the boundary that matters most here
• Sectors we serve — the wider Apex sector index

Frequently asked questions

Is professional indemnity insurance compulsory for a marketing or PR consultancy?

There is no UK regulator that requires it for marketing, PR or creative consultancies. In practice it is close to compulsory anyway, because client contracts, agency rosters and public-sector frameworks commonly require a stated limit of professional indemnity cover before work can start.

Does PI insurance cover a claim that a campaign did not work?

Not by itself. Professional indemnity responds to civil liability for a negligent act, error or omission in your professional services. Disappointing results are not the same as negligence, and most wordings exclude any guarantee of performance and the refund of fees. A claim that the advice itself was given without reasonable care is a different matter.

Do we need media liability as well as PI?

It depends on what you publish and what your PI wording says. Some PI forms for this sector already include defamation and intellectual property infringement; others exclude them. Agencies producing and placing content at volume often need the broader media form, or a combined wording, rather than two policies bought separately.

What happens to old work if the agency closes?

Professional indemnity is claims-made, so a policy has to be in force when a claim is made. If the agency stops trading and the policy simply lapses, work done in earlier years is unprotected. Run-off cover keeps a policy alive for claims arising from past work after the business has ceased.

This page is insurance information for UK businesses, not legal advice. It is a general summary and cannot take account of your own facts, your policy wording or your regulator’s current rules; take advice before acting on it. Position stated as at August 2026.

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This page is general information, not advice on a specific policy.