Dear Listers,

I have posted this for a friend and so please reply to him rather than me (if you are replying off-list), and apologies for cross postings:
[log in to unmask]

Although we are trying to get a group of British conservators together for insurance purposes, we would be very glad if you would share your experiences, States-side.

Many thanks,
Vicki Noble
Curation - The Natural History Museum, London

Professional Insurance
With the 'sue-you' society in which we live, the need for insurance to cover against accident, whether to a person or a piece of work, becomes more urgent to those of us not covered by our employers' insurance.  If you are doing ANY freelance work in Natural Sciences, whether full time, part time or occasionally, you will need insurance against Personal Liability and Professional Indemnity.  Most organisations for whom we work require a £2M cover for Public Liability (PL) which insures you against someone injuring themselves when visiting your studio or you accidentally injuring someone when working on site, and £2M for Professional Indemnity (PI), which covers you if you make a cock-up or that vital skin starts to slip and you end up on the wrong end of a writ!  Since most of us work regularly on objects worth much less than £2M  it seems unfair that we should (in a way) be subbing those who work on high-value objects such as Old Masters &c.

To this end I have contacted Peter Milne of Heath-Lambert (formerly Crowley-Colosso) and have negotiated a combined package of £2M PL and £50K PI for only £262.50 total premium.  I already pay over £600 for my PL cover alone and have great difficulty in maintaining a reasonable level of PI since most insurers do not understand the implications for Natural Science Specimens or cannot be bothered with insuring against problems with low value objects anyway. 

I need a total of ten names to push this deal through, so far I have 3, so if you are interested (or know someone who might be) please either e-mail me: [log in to unmask]
with the details on the form below, or fill in the cut-off slip below.

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Name:

Address:

Nature of business (conservation/consultancy, taxidermy):


Professional qualifications (if any):

Amount of cover you require (if different from above or put ‘cover OK’): 
£     (Public Liability)       £    (Prof. Indemnity)

Estimated turnover figure if you earn over £10K per annum:
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