Hiscox prices an IT consultant's liability policy at $22.50 a month

The workload

Hiscox is a longer-established small-business insurer selling professional liability and errors-and-omissions (E&O) coverage directly online. The workload for a solo founder is a short form: pick a profession category, information technology consultants among them, enter state, estimated annual revenue, and desired limit and deductible, and receive an illustrative quote before speaking to an underwriter. Hiscox's own errors-and-omissions coverage page frames this as a fast task, inviting a visitor to get a customized quote to see how much the coverage costs. The heavier task, reading the exclusions before assuming coverage exists, is what the second document below establishes.

What the documents show

Hiscox's own coverage page states, verified, that E&O insurance from Hiscox starts at $22.50 per month, cautioning that rates differ based on a business's risk profile. The page shows an illustrative example for an IT consultant in California carrying a $500,000 limit and $5,000 deductible at $42.92 per month, or $515 per year, and a business consultant in Texas at $85.42 per month, both marked illustrative. These are Hiscox's own worked examples, not quotes any specific IT consultant would receive. A companion professional liability page states, also verified, that the policy excludes failure to safeguard personally identifiable information or confidential client data, directing anyone worried about a data breach to a cyber security insurance policy instead, a separate Hiscox product, not a broader version of this one.

The operating cost

The one figure Hiscox states outright is the $22.50-per-month floor, a verified starting price, not a typical one; both worked examples sit well above it once a real limit and revenue figure are entered. Hiscox states a founder can save up to 5% bundling E&O with a business owner's policy or general liability, but does not state a combined dollar figure, so that saving cannot be priced beyond the percentage itself.

The stop condition

The professional liability page states retroactive coverage can respond to work performed before the current policy began, meaning dropping the policy does not erase exposure to past work already delivered; Hiscox treats this as a reason coverage is sometimes kept even after a founder stops taking new engagements in a practice area. Beyond that stated point, this entry treats the stop condition as editorial: the policy is worth its premium for as long as the founder delivers paid technology services or advice a client could later claim caused financial harm.

• Does the $22.50 floor bear any relationship to this business's actual revenue, limit, and deductible, or only to the smallest policy Hiscox sells?
• Would a claim over a client's leaked data fall under the exclusion for confidential-data breaches, requiring a separate cyber policy?
• Does a 5% bundling discount change the buying decision once its dollar value is quoted against a real policy?

Hiscox publishes more pricing detail than most competitors reviewed in this batch, including a stated floor and two worked examples, but every number carries the same qualifier: illustrative, dependent on a risk profile the page cannot see until the founder fills in the form.