The Importance Of Insurance

Insurance is essential to the service provided by the PDA, for several reasons:

Financial capability

It provides the substantial financial capability to enable PDA to provide its Legal Defence Services and, if needs be, to settle compensation claims made against full PDA members right up to £5 million pounds per member, per incident. This is the fundamental reason why you need insurance. The insurance is placed with reputable underwriters and these arrangements are made by The Pharmacy Insurance Agency (PIA) (1992) Ltd who are authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.

The PIA Foundation Grant

Many of the services provided by PDA are not connected to or funded by insurance underwriters. Instead they are funded by an ongoing grant from the PIA Foundation, which ensures that 1% of all insurance premiums paid by pharmacists for any of the PIA insurance schemes is invested back into supporting good causes in pharmacy. As such, the PDA is a non-profit-making organisation whose running costs are funded by a grant.

Fundamental principles

If you are an employed pharmacist it is essential that you understand that any insurance cover provided by your employer is not necessarily in your best interest. This is explained in the section entitled Myths about Employers' Insurance Provision. The PDA's insurance schemes use a two pronged approach to provide total protection:

• Legal Defence Costs Insurance

• Professional Indemnity (PI) Insurance*

* Details of the different occupational PI insurance schemes are available here

Other insurance

The PDA's close links with the Pharmacy Insurance Agency (PIA) ensure an excellent provision of insurance in other areas too. Details of these additional forms of insurance can be found here.