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Recruitment Agency Insurance

Protecting recruitment professionals from less than £55* per year

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Excellent 4.7 out of 5

What insurance does a recruitment agency need?


Our standard cover is:

  • £1 million cover for public and products liability (with an option to increase to £2 million, £5 million or £10 million)
  • £10,000 cover for any financial loss (£50K cover optional)
  • Worldwide liability cover for temporary work abroad for up to 14 days (excluding the USA and Canada)

Recruitment agency insurance covers a business whose product is other people. Every placement is a judgement call that gets tested in someone else’s workplace: the candidate who interviews brilliantly and performs badly, the vetting step a client swears you missed, the temp who has an accident on their site. When a placement goes wrong, the recruiter is the one both sides look at.

Professional Saver arranges specialist insurance for recruitment agencies, consultancies and self-employed recruiters from £55* a year, with public liability as standard and professional indemnity scaled to the placements you make. Quote online in five minutes; documents arrive the same day.

Professional indemnity insurance carries the recruitment industry’s native claim: a client alleging that your negligence, a missed reference, an overlooked red flag, an unsuitable recommendation, caused them financial loss. Professional indemnity insurance pays the compensation and the defence costs, and defence matters here, because “bad hire” and “bad recruiting” are different things that get argued as the same thing. PI works on a claims made basis: the policy in force when the claim arrives is the one that answers, so keep it continuous rather than switching it off between contracts.

Public liability insurance covers the physical side of a people business: candidates and clients visiting your office, and you visiting theirs for meetings, interviews and assessments. Public liability insurance comes as standard at £1 million, with options up to £10 million where client contracts require more.

Employers’ liability insurance is a legal requirement once the recruitment business employs anyone, including your own consultants, and carries fines for every day it’s missing. One boundary to draw honestly: if you run temp or contract desks where placed workers are legally your employees, your exposure changes shape, including vicarious liability for what they do on client sites. Describe the mix of perm and temp when you quote so the cover matches the model. We don’t sell standalone cyber insurance either; a recruitment agency’s candidate database is exactly the kind of data exposure worth naming at quote stage.

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Why choose Professional Saver recruitment agency insurance?

Save £££ on your insurance Save on your insurance

Customers are always telling us how much they saved by switching

Trusted for over 40 years Trusted for over 40 years

We’ve been providing insurance to businesses since 1984

Financial Strength Financial Strength

Insurance provided by a Standard & Poor’s ‘AA- Stable’ rated insurer

Defaqto 5 Star rated

Our Professional Saver Insurance (Covea) has been independently rated 5 Stars by Defaqto – the highest possible rating, awarded to excellent products with a comprehensive range of features and benefits.

How our recruitment agency insurance works

1 Apply online

Complete our simple quote form with basic details about your business.

2 Get a quote

Get an instant quote & choose any optional covers you may need.

3 You’re insured!

Instantly activate your Professional Saver policy and view your certificates online.

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Why do recruitment agencies need insurance?

Because placements are judged in hindsight. At offer stage everyone agrees the candidate is excellent; at tribunal stage the client remembers your assurances differently. PI cover exists for the gap between what was said and what is later claimed, which in recruitment is where the money lives.

Because client contracts demand it. PSL agreements and terms of business within the recruitment sector routinely name required PI and liability cover levels before an agency gets on the roster. The certificate is part of winning the work, not just surviving it.

Because an agency’s costs are front-loaded. Recruitment companies carry salaries, job boards and office costs against fees that arrive on completion. A single defended claim without adequate insurance lands on exactly the cash flow least able to absorb it.

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What does our recruitment agency policy cover?

Every policy includes public liability, products liability, legal expenses and £10,000 of financial loss cover as standard, from £55* a year. You then shape the insurance policies to the desk you run:

  • Professional indemnity for negligence claims over vetting, screening and recommendations, at the level your terms of business require
  • Employers’ liability for your own consultants and staff, usually a legal requirement
  • Business contents and equipment cover for the office and the laptops it runs on
  • Personal accident insurance, so an injury to the person who bills doesn’t stop the business
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How much does recruitment agency cover cost?

From £55* a year for the base policy. The main variables are the level of professional indemnity your clients require, the size of your team, and whether your types of recruitment include temp and contract desks. A self-employed recruitment consultant working perm placements from home sits at the affordable end; get an insurance quote online, itemised in about five minutes, with monthly instalments available.

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Cover for the judgement calls

Recruitment is a business of confident recommendations, and insurance is what stands behind the confident ones that age badly. Get a recruitment agency insurance quote online from £55* a year, backed by an insurer rated AA- (Stable) by Standard & Poor’s, and protect your business on both sides of every placement.

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Chosen by over 5000 businesses and counting*

Chosen by over 18761 businesses and counting

Online & Anywhere

We like to keep things simple. Your quote, purchase and documents are all available online, anytime.

Monthly Instalments

Cashflow is important to every business. Spread the cost by paying in easy monthly instalments.

Instant Cover

No need to wait for your documents. Our professional cover starts from the date you select.

Added Protection

Public liability, products liability, financial loss, legal expenses and accidental death cover as standard.

* Total number of live policies as of 31/10/2025

Who We Cover

Cover and Professions We Insure

Professional Indemnity Insurance
Professional Indemnity Insurance

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FAQs

Recruitment Agency Insurance FAQs

Once you employ anyone, almost always yes, and the fines for going without accrue daily. The recruitment-specific wrinkle is temp staffing: workers you place but legally employ count as yours. If that’s your model, say so when buying insurance, because it’s the single fact that most changes what you need.

Vicarious liability is being held responsible for someone else’s actions, and in recruitment it surfaces when a worker you supplied causes damage or injury on a client site. Perm-only agencies rarely carry this exposure; temp and contract agencies can. Describe your model at quote stage and the policy gets shaped to the reality.

Yes, and this is the cheap end of the range: a solo recruiter with a laptop and a phone sits near the £55* starting point. Client terms usually still demand PI at stated levels, so being small doesn’t mean skipping cover; it means the cover costs less. Our consultants insurance page covers the wider consulting family.

Not much, and mostly in your favour: no office premises means less to insure. The claims that matter, placement disputes and client meetings, follow the work rather than the address, so PI and public liability stay the core whatever the postcode.

Before the first placement, because that’s when the exposure starts and because most client terms require proof of cover before releasing a vacancy. Waiting until a client asks usually means arranging it in a hurry, on their deadline instead of yours.

What our customers say

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