Robotics & autonomous systems

Insurance for robotics and autonomous-systems businesses

Yes — Apex arranges insurance for UK robotics and autonomous-systems businesses: professional indemnity for design and software errors, products liability for a robot or autonomous system that causes injury or damage, and cyber alongside. We place it through the specialist Lloyd’s market via wholesale, with the worldwide and US jurisdiction that export and supply contracts demand.

Part of: Commercial insurance

In short

Robotics and autonomous systems rarely sit inside one policy. A single failure can be a design fault, a software error, a cyber compromise and a physical injury at once, spanning professional indemnity, products liability, cyber and public liability. The hard part is the liability question: when a system decides for itself, with no clear human operator, some wordings still expect a person to be responsible, and a loss can fall between policies.

Who this is for

‘Robotics and autonomous systems’ spans a wide range of UK businesses, from deep-tech start-ups to established manufacturers:

Robotics manufacturers and integrators — industrial arms, cobots, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).
Autonomous-systems and software developers — the software that lets a machine sense and decide for itself.
Drone, UAV and uncrewed systems, which also sit across aviation — see aerospace and aviation insurance.
Service, agricultural, inspection and medical or surgical robotics.
Self-driving and connected-vehicle developers and their subsystem suppliers.
Deep-tech and hardware start-ups bringing a first autonomous product to market — see insurance for deep-tech and hardware start-ups.

Most are a blend, needing both sides arranged together.

The covers a robotics firm actually needs

The programme pulls from a familiar set of covers, led by the ones that match what you do:

Cover	What it does
Professional indemnity (E&O)	The cost of putting right an error in what you designed, engineered or coded.
Products liability	Your legal liability if a robot or system you supplied causes injury or damage in use.
Cyber	A compromise of the system, its data or controls, and the harm that follows.
Product recall	Identifying, retrieving and correcting an affected batch of units.
Public liability	Injury or damage to third parties during installation, trials and commissioning.
Employers’ liability	A legal requirement once you employ people.
Property and business interruption	Prototypes, test rigs, tooling and stock, and lost income.

Professional indemnity and products liability carry the most weight, and they overlap: the same fault can be a professional error before the machine ships and a products claim once it is in service. Both must respond without pointing at each other.

The liability question: who is responsible when the system decides?

The hard part of insuring an autonomous system is not the machine; it is who is liable when it decides for itself. Standard wordings assume a product does what a person tells it, so three problems follow:

One event, several policies. A single failure can be a design error, a software fault, a cyber compromise and a physical injury at once — touching professional indemnity, products liability and cyber. See AI consultants’ professional indemnity.
The ‘human operator’ assumption. Some wordings expect a person to have been responsible for the act or event; where a system decided for itself, whether a policy responds turns on its wording, not its name.
Gaps between policies. A cyber attack that causes physical damage can be excluded as ‘cyber’ by a property wording while the cyber policy excludes the property damage — so the loss falls between the two.

Careful broking does not settle the liability question — still being worked out in law and the courts — but it presents the exposure honestly to underwriters who understand it and builds the covers to sit together. See our autonomous vehicle insurance explainer.

Self-driving vehicles and the Automated Vehicles Act 2024

For self-driving road vehicles, the UK has begun to set out who carries the risk. The Automated Vehicles Act 2024 creates a framework for authorising self-driving vehicles and the organisations behind them, and shifts where liability sits:

The Authorised Self-Driving Entity (ASDE) — usually the manufacturer or developer that puts a vehicle forward for authorisation — is responsible for it continuing to meet the self-driving standard.
The ‘user-in-charge’ is a person in the vehicle while it drives itself; in self-driving mode they are generally not treated as the driver for road-traffic purposes. A fully driverless vehicle relies on a licensed operator instead.
Liability moves toward the insurer and the ASDE. An injured party can be compensated without first proving a driver was at fault, and the insurer may then pursue the responsible entity — so primary risk sits with the insurer and the manufacturer, not a driver.

The detail is still developing through secondary legislation, and much of the wider field — factory, warehouse, field and airborne systems — has no equivalent statutory channel, so cover there must be arranged with care. Where systems are sold abroad, US exposure needs deliberate handling — see US-jurisdiction professional indemnity.

Why place this cover through Apex

Apex Insurance Brokers is an independent commercial insurance broker established in 2009 and based in Bristol — in the South West’s robotics, hardware and deep-tech scene, home to the Bristol Robotics Laboratory. We are owned entirely by our directors and directly authorised by the FCA since 2016. We are not tied to any single insurer, and we have access to over 30 markets, including the Lloyd’s market — via wholesale — where emerging-technology and autonomous-systems risks are written. Every client has a named broker who understands the difference between the software you write, the hardware you ship and the decisions your system makes.

Owned by its directors, not for sale. No consolidator, no private-equity owner, no external shareholders — and we have declined approaches to buy the firm. Read the Apex Independence Charter.
Independent, not tied. No single-insurer scheme, no in-house policy, no placement quotas — the recommendation is the one that fits, not the one we are paid to push.
Over 30 markets, including Lloyd’s. Specialist UK PI insurers and Lloyd’s syndicates via wholesale, so a risk that one underwriter dislikes can still be placed properly with another.
Usually three or four competing quotes, laid out side by side — limit, excess, retroactive date, exclusions and premium — with a plain-language note on the trade-offs.
The stay-put letter. If your existing cover is right, we say so in writing, free and without obligation. How the stay-put letter works.
A named broker all year. The person who places your cover is the person who picks up the phone at renewal, on a mid-term change, or when a letter of claim lands.
Director-level attention on claims. We help you notify circumstances early and in the right form, stay involved once the insurer’s panel solicitors are appointed, and tell you plainly where you stand.
Directly authorised by the FCA since 2016, not an appointed representative trading under someone else’s permissions.

Frequently asked

Does a robotics firm need professional indemnity or products liability?

Usually both. Professional indemnity responds to an error in what you designed, engineered or coded — the cost of putting the mistake right. Products liability responds once the machine is in use and causes injury or damage. On an autonomous system the same fault can trigger either, so the two are best arranged together.

Who is liable when an autonomous system makes its own decision?

That is the unsettled question, worked out in law and the courts, not by a policy. Older wordings often assume a human was responsible, so whether cover responds depends on the exact wording and how your system behaves. Careful broking does not remove the question, but it stops the exposure falling into a gap.

What does the Automated Vehicles Act 2024 change?

It sets up a framework for authorising self-driving road vehicles and the organisations behind them — the Authorised Self-Driving Entity — and introduces the ‘user-in-charge’, channelling primary liability toward the insurer and that entity rather than a traditional driver. The detail is still being filled in by secondary legislation, and it applies to road vehicles, not robotics in general.

We export our robots, including to the US — can you arrange the right jurisdiction?

Yes. Robotics supply chains are export-facing, and claims involving US customers are litigated in US courts, so cover often needs to be written worldwide including the USA and Canada, which a standard UK policy frequently excludes — see US-jurisdiction professional indemnity. Tell us where your systems are sold and we will match the jurisdiction your contracts require.

Building robots or autonomous systems?

Tell us what you design, write and build, where it operates, and any contract or export requirement you have to meet — we’ll map the exposure and place it in the specialist market. Or call 0117 325 0027.

Get a quote Request a callback

Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England and Wales, company number 07014570. This page is general information about insurance for robotics and autonomous-systems businesses, not advice on your individual circumstances, and it does not guarantee that cover will be available or on what terms.