Just getting my insurance sorted for my PFCO and I am wondering how much liability cover should I get? Would 1 million be enough or is it best to have more than that?
More than that I’d say, probably as much as you can sensibly afford then a little bit more.
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FPVUK give their members a £5 million PLI as part of the annual subscription so that’s the level set for hobbyist fliers.
I would suggest at least that for PfCO ops.
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If you’re looking for professional insurance, pay for what you need… and I’d say that will depend on the jobs you’re doing.
The public liability component of your insurance covers you for damage to property or injury to persons. If your work generally entails landscape photo/videography in the middle of nowhere then £1m is probably going to cover you for pretty-much anything you might do (and if you pick up the odd job that carries more risk, your insurer will likely give you a temporary increase for a small fee).
If you have a dozen jobs a year surveying multi-£m solar farms or scooting about in congested areas filming construction sites, your risks are more complicates, things are more likely to go wrong and if they do they’ll cost you a lot more… so it might make more sense to pay for the higher cover up-front rather than keep having to bump it up on a per-job basis.
You can always advertise that you have £1m as standard but this will be increased where the client requests it or your risk assessment for a job indicates that it is necessary (bearing in mind that they might be quite happy with £1m but at the end of the day they aren’t the ones who are responsible for the flight).
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BMFA civil liablity insurance is up to £25 million for hobby flying for one incident for members which costs around thirty quid or so a year. This seems crazy to me. So someone who has had no training, opens the box, charges the battery and flies can have £25 million. I pay around £500 a year for £1 million for my commercial use with a PfCO where I have had initial and ongoing training.