Being a life coach is a very demanding job. The things that you have to do for your clients and worry about how expansive it is. As a life coach, you’re supposed to ‘coach’ your client on major life decisions and give recommendations on what they should do when faced with difficult situations.
The thing with being a life coach is that the impact of your advice will have consequences on almost every major aspect of your client’s life. Thus, the consequences of your ‘advice’ will be as broad as the scope. With no rules and ethics, a client can say they followed your advice and their lives were ruined as a result. Given this breadth of potential unintended consequences and blame attribution, people in this career should consider getting life coach insurance to cover potential risks. Here’s how you can safeguard your career as a life coach from financial risks.
- The Life Of A Life Coach Is Risky
The work of a life coach involves a lot of risks since they’re engaged for the most part in trying to contribute to the development of a person’s life and character. One of the hardest parts in the work of a life coach is that it’s a bit difficult to make the connection between what a life coach said or did, and its correlation to the resulting action, event, or accomplishment.
The life coach usually gives advice or recommendations in relatively very general and abstract terms. Because of this, the connection is often lost between what the life coach said or did, and the concrete observable event which is supposedly the positive effect or outcome achieved as a result of owing to the advice given by the life coach. When things go wrong after a client follows the advice of a life coach, the word is immediately said that the life coach is to be blamed.
New risks are always arising and expanding, and insurance is designed to cover risks. This is why practicing professionals, including life coaches, should seriously consider protecting themselves from risks.
- How Insurance Can Protect You from Risk
The surest way to protect your life coach career from any potential risk would be to avail yourself of life coach insurance. This insurance consists of a number of business insurance policies. The purpose of these policies is to protect you from any potential claim which may possibly arise from your clients. Since you give professional advice to your clients as part of your work, there may come a time in the future when a client would blame you and your advice for any untoward or unfortunate incident or event in their life.
You’ll never be able to foresee who will go after you for some alleged wrong or harm that they had to suffer because they had a counselling session with you and followed your professional advice. It’s good to be insured.
- Professional Liability Insurance – Even though the profession of a life coach doesn’t require licensing, it doesn’t mean that life coaches are exempted from professional liability if someone sues them. In fact, the lack of a licensing board can increase the potential liability of a life coach. Without any standard scope of practice and ethics, complaints can expand the things that life coaches can be held liable for.
By getting professional liability insurance, you’ll be covered from the risk of lawsuits over any allegations of professional errors, omissions, and/or negligence. A typical professional liability policy would have an annual premium cost between GBP£900 to GBP£1,900. The coverage amount would be between GBP£1 million to GBP£2 million.
- General Liability Insurance – Aside from the risk of a potential lawsuit over any professional advice that you may have given to your clients, you’re also exposed to other general risks. Clients who go to your home or office premises to consult with you may get injured in a mishap or accident. When this happens, they can sue you for any physical harm or bodily injury.
This risk can be covered by getting commercial general liability insurance. This type of policy will pay for the claims of your client who suffered an injury. The policy covers claims for medical or hospital expenses. It even covers property damage such as when a tree branch falls on their car while parked outside your home or clinic during a consultation visit.
The annual premium cost of general liability insurance is somewhere between GBP£300 to GBP£1,000. This would give coverage of GBP£1 million per occurrence, for an aggregate of GBP£2 million.
- BOP or Business Owner’s Policy – Some general liability policies include a Business Owner’s Policy (BOP) insurance with them. General liability insurance and commercial property insurance are bundled in BOP. If you’re working as a single proprietor in your life coaching practice, it would be wise to consider getting a BOP. They usually provide wider coverage at a much lower cost.
Prudence As Life Coach
Like a lot of other professions, life coaches face numerous kinds of risks throughout their careers. Most of these risks are beyond your control. Since a good part of your job is to give advice and recommendations to your clients, you don’t have control over what they do with your advice, much less with what happens because of what they do after hearing your advice. As a life coach, you might want to consider being more prudent about the risks you face and get covered.
