If you ever have to make a claim the most gut wrenching response you can get from your insurer is that you don’t have the correct cover. When you pay lots of money for insurance it’s infuriating if it doesn’t help you when you need it most. That’s why it’s so important to make sure you have the right cover for you.

Two Insurance policies that appear to be quite similar are Production Insurance and Professional Indemnity Insurance. They couldn’t be more different! So what’s the difference between them?

Professional Indemnity Insurance

Professional indemnity Insurance is traditionally for claims resulting from you, your employees or freelancers negligence. Typically, there needs to be evidence you have been negligent. Crucially for production companies, it also covers matters such as breach of intellectual property, copyright infringment, breach of confidentiality. This tends to be matters within your control.

Production Insurance

Production Insurance/re-shoot is for matters outside your control. For example, sometimes a memory card corrupts, a camera unexpectedly fails whilst on a shoot or a hard drive is damaged or stolen. These are matters outside of your control.

If you’re still uncertain and would like some advice, please get in touch with us and we’d be more than happy to discuss your options.

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Cover Types

We assemble a portfolio of advertising insurance policies that a modern TV Department or content creation department requires. Your cover may include:

• Non-Appearance & Celebrity Death & Disgrace Insurance
• All Risks Insurance (Props, Sets, Wardrobe and Film Negative in Post Production & Storage)
• Public & Employer’s Liability Insurances including talent
• Errors & Omissions/Professional Indemnity Insurance
• Adverse Weather Insurance
• Personal Accident Insurance
• Film & TV Union Travel Insurance
• Motor insurance for ‘Action’ vehicles
• Cyber & Data insurance – specific cover to protect against GDPR infringement and cyber threats made against you by malicious third parties
• Commercial Producers Indemnity Insurance for In-House Production Companies

We are also able to arrange bespoke insurance policies for the following types of media companies:

• Post-Production companies
• Equipment Hire companies
• TV Production and other Film/Media related companies

Whilst we can ensure you’re covered for almost all situations, if there’s a risk unique to you, please contact us and we will try to devise an individual policy to meet your needs.

Commercial Producers Indemnity Insurance

Commercial Producers Insurance Policies go beyond simply insuring your production equipment and liability. A Commercial Producers Indemnity Policy will cover non-appearance of crew, talent, essential equipment, props, sets and wardrobe due to “Anything beyond your control”, this could include delays in arriving at shoots due to adverse weather conditions, wild-cat airline strikes, ash clouds etc.

A Commercial Producers Policy can be tailored for a particular shoot or production or purchased on an annual policy, the cover is flexible and protects the clients production activities from start to finish.

Why would you need Commercial Producers insurance?

• If you are a production company working to contracts approved by the Advertising Producers’ Association and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, you will need a Commercial Producers Insurance Policy to meet your contractual requirements
• Timings for commercial production is often down to the wire and any delays can result in hefty expenses
• Equipment and key personnel are expensive assets and need to be protected should theft, damage, illness or injury occur

What is covered under a Commercial Producers Insurance Policy?

• Property (including theft, accidental damage and breakdown of equipment)
• Cast – Cost to reshoot following loss of anyone essential to the shoot in your budget due to Death, Accident or Sickness
• Production Media
• Extra Expenses – Cost to reshoot following loss of or damage to essential equipment, props or location.
• Third party property damage
• Public liability

Commercial Producers Insurance will give you peace of mind that the shoot is covered from the outset of the policy, (even before filming has commenced) all the way through to completion of post-production.

For TV producers who lose their shows because their stars are racist trolls zonked out on Ambien, they have insurance for that now. It’s called “disgrace insurance,” and it covers production losses due to a wide range of disgraceful and illegal behavior by members of the cast and crew.

The ins and outs of disgrace insurance was the subject of a panel discussion today at the PGA’s 10th annual Produced By Conference, which is being held on the Paramount lot.

Bob Jellen, managing director of HUB Entertainment Insurance and the guru of disgrace insurance policies, said he’s written more than 4,000 of them, but noted that they’ve only been invoked five or six times. They cover loses due to sexual harassment, assault, drug arrests and even murder by a cast and crew member.

He noted, however, that Rosanne Barr’s Twitter meltdown that caused ABC to cancel her hit series Roseanne probably wouldn’t be covered because her known propensity for making outrageous statements would have made it unlikely that any insurer would have offered the coverage.

Kevin Spacey’s firing on All the Money in the World because of sexual assault allegations probably also wasn’t covered because few feature films ever obtain disgrace insurance. Still, the producers of House of Cards might have a valid claim if they had the policy.

“Because of the #MeToo movement,” Jellen said, “we’re seeing a lot more claims coming in.”

Normally, he said, insurance costs producers 1%-2% of their budget, and disgrace insurance can double that.

The panel, titled “What Do You Mean That’s Not Covered?” examined numerous other types of disasters, large and small, that can befall productions and trigger insurance claims.

Mark Ballin, a partner at Claim Specialists International, recalled a show that was shooting in Mexico that had to high-tail it out of the country after receiving a threat that the cast and crew would be killed if they continued shooting there. “That was a claim that was covered,” he said.

Jellen noted such an incident is covered by “imminent peril coverage,” and that producers should make sure their policies contain the words “threat of” imminent peril.

“Many years ago,” Jellen said, “filming in New York was difficult because of the mob. You had to pay people off.” (He didn’t say whether or not that would be covered as a production loss, and several panelists agreed that that’s no longer the case in New York.)

Peter Oillataguerre, MGM’s president of physical production, noted that insurance covered many of the losses incurred on the James Bond film Spectre when actor Daniel Craig was injured on set. “It was pretty nutty, but we got through it and made the release date,” he said.

“We have seen many cases,” Ballin said, “where actors don’t make it to work where drugs were involved the night before — it causes chaos with production.” Sometimes that’s covered, he said, “but if the actor has a history of it, it’s not covered.”

“Every scenario is different,” said Jacqueline Volver, senior entertainment underwriter at Chubb Insurance.

Touched with Fire producer Jeremy Alter noted that insurance covered a wide range of difficulties faced on that 2015 film, ranging from the director of photography giving birth on the second to last day of shooting to Katie Holmes being mercilessly hounded by paparazzi.