5 Common Accountant Insurance Claims

All business owners want to be successful and grow their businesses. To do that effectively, realizing the value and importance of insurance in supporting your risk management strategy and ensuring your financial wellness is vital.

Accidents, allegations of wrongdoing or mistakes, and unexpected damages caused by things out of your control can happen to any independent professional or small business owner without warning. Despite your best efforts, bad things happen, so it’s essential to consider everything that could go wrong and financially devastate your company.

Here are five insurance claims from a handful of our accountant and bookkeeper clients we helped resolve:

Download Our FREE Insurance Whitepaper

Learn everything you need to protect your small business.

Your email address will be used by Zensurance to provide latest news, offers and tips. You can unsubscribe at any time.

1. Withheld Fees Claim

Our client is a chartered professional accountant tasked with preparing a tax return for a client. Unfortunately, after submitting the return to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), our client received a “demand letter” from a lawyer (a formal document sent on behalf of a client to request payment or action from another party) for submitting the return late and with erroneous information. Consequently, the client did not pay our client for their work.

However, our client purchased an errors and omissions (E&O) insurance policy from us that covered situations if a client refused to pay for their services. 

We were able to provide our client with a sense of relief and security by ensuring they were reimbursed over $60,000 because of this incident.

2. Late Filing Penalty Claim

Another of our accountant clients reported their client’s tax return late, which resulted in a fine to their client from the CRA. 

However, our client’s E&O insurance covered the fine and interest imposed by the CRA, and the client was reimbursed a total of $14,015.68.

3. Damage to Office Equipment Claim

E&O insurance is a must-have for accountants and bookkeepers, but it doesn’t cover everything that can go wrong.

In this instance, our client, who rents office space, arrived at work one morning to discover a water leak that occurred in their workplace following a severe rainstorm had damaged their office equipment. 

Thankfully, they included commercial property insurance in their policy and were reimbursed $13,814.04 to replace their office equipment.

4. Business Interruption Claim

Wildfires have become a significant and recurring threat in Canada. The authorities ordered one of our accountant clients in British Columbia to evacuate their premises due to an approaching wildfire.

That put them in a bind since they could not access paper-based files at their office and couldn’t operate as usual. The temporary closure of their office led to a reduction in their business income. 

Fortunately, along with their commercial property coverage, they had business interruption insurance, which reimbursed them $22,500 for the loss.

5. Omission Claim

One of our bookkeeper clients did not include a T4 slip while preparing a tax return for their client because their client failed to give it to them. That didn’t matter to the CRA. The omission of the T4 resulted in the bookkeeper’s client being fined. 

However, the $1,331.11 CRA fine the bookkeeper’s client received was covered by our client’s E&O insurance.

Protect Your Finances With Low-Cost Business Insurance

These claims examples highlight the importance and value of protecting your profession or business with a comprehensive business insurance policy from unexpected incidents, errors, or accidents that can threaten your bottom line and reputation.

That’s where we come in: Zensurance specializes in providing customized, low-cost protection for hundreds of professions and industries across Canada. Fill out our online application for a free quote, and explore your options to safeguard your finances.

– Reviewed by Mohammad Samin, Senior Claims Advisor, Reagan Elly, Claims Advisor, and Brandon Bowie, Team Lead, Professional Lines, Zensurance.