Business cyber insurance, and which UK trades are actually buying it
Business cyber insurance is bought for a reason, and the reason is rarely a general sense of risk. It is a client contract that now names it, a bank that asked, a near miss with a fake invoice, or the discovery that the professional indemnity policy does not answer for a mailbox somebody else was reading. What the cover needs to do depends far less on the size of the business than on two questions: what data it holds about other people, and how money moves through it.
- median printed starting price
- £5.31
- insurers in the record
- 8
- trades compared
- 13
The record above carries 8 UK insurers and the starting price each one prints.
- 8 insurersevery figure quoted from the insurer's own page
- Verbatimeach quote re-fetched and matched before it ships; a page that repriced fails the build
- 13 tradesa trade counts for an insurer only where its own page names it
How to decide what you actually need
- The two questions that decide the shape of the cover. If the business holds personal data about clients, patients, tenants or staff, the exposure is notification and regulatory: telling people, fielding their questions, and answering to the Information Commissioner. If the business moves money on instruction, the exposure is fraud: a changed bank detail on an invoice, a convincing email from a supplier, a payment made in good faith to a criminal. Most businesses have some of both, but the balance decides which sections need real limits and which can sit at the default.
- The trades where the phone rings first. Accountancy and bookkeeping practices, letting and estate agencies, recruitment firms, clinics and therapy practices, IT consultancies and web agencies, and anyone running an online shop all buy it early, because each of them either holds a file of other people's details or is trusted to move somebody else's money. Trades that work on site with tools and no client database tend to buy it late and to buy a smaller limit, which is a reasonable decision as long as it is a decision rather than an omission.
- What triggers the purchase, in the order it usually happens. A contract clause is the most common trigger, because corporate and public sector buyers now write cyber cover into the same paragraph as professional indemnity. The second is an incident at a competitor or a supplier. The third is a broker at renewal asking the question directly. It is worth noticing that none of these is a risk assessment: the purchase is usually reactive, and the businesses that price it calmly are the ones who looked before somebody made them.
- How it is sold, and why that matters to the price. Cyber can be bought standalone, added as a section to a business package, or included in a trade scheme at a small default limit. The packaged version is cheap and often shallow: a low aggregate limit, no separate crime section, and an incident response service that is a claims number rather than a team. Comparing the standalone quote against the packaged section is the only way to see what the cheaper option left out.
Common questions
- How small is too small for cyber insurance?
- There is no floor. Sole traders who hold client records or invoice by email buy it, and the premium at that size is modest. The question is not headcount, it is whether somebody else's data or somebody else's money passes through the business.
- Is cyber insurance a legal requirement in the UK?
- No. No statute requires it. It is required by contract for a growing share of corporate and public sector work, and data protection law creates the duties that make a claim expensive rather than requiring you to insure against them.
- Does my business package already include cyber?
- Sometimes, at a small limit, under a heading such as cyber and data. Check the schedule for a stated limit and a section list. An included section with a low aggregate limit is not the same product as a standalone policy, and it usually will not carry a crime section.
- What if the breach happened at my supplier, not at me?
- Most wordings respond to your own liability and your own costs, including where the failure was at an outsourced provider holding your data. Cover for the supplier's own losses is not yours to claim. The contract with that supplier is what decides who carries it.
Other trades
- Salons: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Beauty salons: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Hairdressing salons: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Nail salons: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Photographers: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Cleaning businesses: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Electricians: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Plumbers: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- IT consultants: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- HR consultants: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Business consultants: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Management consultants: what UK insurers print as a starting price
- Consultants: what UK insurers print as a starting price
Sources
Cite or embed this figure
The published starting price for business liability cover in the UK business insurance market was £5.31 in read September 2026, across 8 insurers and schemes recorded in Insurance by Profession UK Business Insurance Starting-Price Record.
Cite as: "Insurance by Profession UK Business Insurance Starting-Price Record", updated 2026-09-11, https://insurancebyprofession.com/cyber/.