Office Guardian is a Lockton service provided by MS Amlin, designed to provide your business with comprehensive, effective insurance protection at extremely competitive premiums. Using a unique, tailored approach, Office Guardian provides market leading-cover, purpose-built to meet the specific requirements of your solicitor practice.
Office Guardian's team of experts can help you to protect your premises and assets, ensuring that your firm can continue to run smoothly even in difficult conditions. With 24-hour claims support from our dedicated service team, you can be sure you'll receive the right advice, the moment you need it.
Theft of equipment or money, or damage to buildings through fire, flood or other disaster will often have a significant impact on the ability of your business to function at its best. Office Guardian can help you to limit these risks, and mitigate the impact on your business should disaster occur.
What benefits can Office Guardian offer?
- A premium rebate of 10% payable on renewal
MS Amlin will rebate 10% of the premium paid to them at the following renewal should the policy remain claims-free, and if the policy holder renews for a further twelve months with Lockton & MS Amlin. This does not apply to any terrorism premium.
- No average condition applied to your policy
Standard market practice is to apply an 'average clause' to the property sections of a policy. This means that if the property is under insured, the payment of a claim will be reduced proportionately. For example, a policy has a £500,000 sum insured for contents and the accurate reinstatement value of the contents is £1,000,000. If contents worth £200,000 are destroyed in a fire, the 'average' clause will reduce the claim to £100,000. With no 'average' clause applied to the policy this will not be an issue.
- Additional increase in cost of working included automatically up to the full sum insured
The Lockton/MS Amlin policy gives additional increase in cost of working cover automatically, up to your gross revenue sum insured. This could be a valuable resource that enables you to immediately implement a crisis recovery plan, regardless of the economic merit of such action.
- No maximum indemnity period for business interruption cover
The business interruption section of a policy will usually state a maximum indemnity period. This means the policy will respond to losses up to the specified indemnity period, subject to the maximum sum insured. Removing the indemnity period will eliminate any time limitation and will ensure that the full sum insured is paid out if needed, regardless of the time period it takes for your business to recover from an insured event.
- Loss of revenue includes billable hours
In the event of an insured loss, the policy will indemnify your loss of income based on the agreed hourly rate or rates billed to clients by partners and fee earning employees, as well as additional costs of working including 'uneconomic' costs. All subject to a maximum of your chosen sum insured.
- Additional expenditure for key personnel
Your policy is extended to cover certain costs incurred as a consequence of the death or the necessary retirement on medical grounds of any partner, principal, or senior executive due to damage to property insured. Such costs include: recruitment costs, employing a temporary staff member, the cost of one person reading ongoing matters, the cost of notifying clients of the change of personnel, defensive marketing, and changes to business stationery.
- Nil excess applies when a property claim exceeds £1,000
MS Amlin have agreed to waive their right to the policy excess if you have a property claim that exceeds £1,000 in value.
- Misuse of stolen or lost business credit cards
Cover exists within the money section of the policy for up to £10,000 for the misuse of stolen or lost business credit cards.
- Property during conveyance
Your policy gives you automatic cover for up to £500,000 and 90 days for damage that occurs to property under conveyance between exchange of contract and completion. This applies if you are instructed by the vendor, purchaser, lessor or lessee are expressly responsible for ensuring that such buildings are insured.
- Practical liability limits
Claims costs are increasing and it is essential that adequate limits are in place. As standard, the policy provides you with a limit of indemnity of £10 million for employers, public and products liability.
- Trust and estate property covered automatically for 90 days
The policy automatically offers 90 days cover for insured damage to buildings that, at the time of the damage, the insured has responsibility to insure through acting in its capacity as trustee, guardian or executor of an estate provided that the property is not insured under another policy. Cover beyond 90 days can be negotiated.
- ProtectionPlus
You can allocate up to £500,000 in the event of any one or more of the following types of loss: Trace and access, expediting costs and temporary repairs, fire brigade charges and extinguishing expenses, damage by emergency services, loss of metered water and landscaping.
- Electronic data recovery costs including data recreation
A standard 'reinstatement of data' sections gives cover for re-compiling information on data carrying materials from other records or re-recording data on new tapes, cards or disks. Our policy provides this cover, but also covers the cost of recreating the data, not just re-compiling it.
- Claims preparation clause
Quantifying the insured financial consequences of an incident can be complex. This extension of cover provides you with up to £35,000 cover to engage the services of a professional to assist if required.
- Environmental liability
The Lockton/MS Amlin policy is extended to cover the insured for remediation costs and emergency expenses that the insured becomes legally liable to pay as a result of a pollution incident on or under your premises up to a limit of £125,000.
- Impairment of computer services
The Lockton/MS Amlin policy provides cover for computer breakdown, reinstatement of data and interruption for the business caused by the malicious attack by a person, whether they have authorised access to the system or not.
- Third party telecommunications or public utilities fraud
The policy provides cover for up to £100,000 for the direct theft or extraction by a third party of telecommunications or public utilities.
The cover is underwritten by MS Amlin Insurance – a secure Insurer (A-AM Best Rated) with a reputation for 'plain speaking' policies and proactive claims settlement. MS Amlin have written a bespoke package solution for law firms, producing exclusive and unique policy wording for Lockton. MS Amlin have guaranteed exclusive rating discounts for Lockton Office Guardian to ensure they are price proximate.
For more information, please speak to our office insurance team –
Clarissa.McCart@uk.lockton.com , Gavin.Donald@uk.lockton.com , Tony.Murray@uk.lockton.com
Or officeguardian@uk.lockton.com / +44 028 9024 8989