Why Insurance is Essential to Your Career as a PT

Insurance: it’s not something you ever think about – until you need it. When you were plotting your chosen career path and looking into courses, qualifications and work experience that could land you your first role, you probably weren’t expecting to deal with a whole load of paperwork.

Well, thankfully, you don’t have to. Our tailored personal trainer insurance packages relieve you of this bothersome but necessary burden, but did you know why it’s so important?

Everything comes down to you

People come to you for results, often in a one-to-one situation. This not only puts a great deal of pressure on you to deliver but also puts you directly in the firing line should anything go wrong. Furthermore, while you’re certain to be able to handle the first level of pressure, having trained extensively for it, nobody can ever be fully prepared to handle a compensation claim.

Well, that is, nobody apart from insurance experts and legal professionals. With so much pressure already on you as you work, network, market your business and try to find a little time for yourself somewhere in the midst of it all, our policies allow you to focus on your work – without worrying about what could go wrong.

In fact, worrying about such eventualities might not even be in your nature, which helps to explain why you can benefit from leaving insurance concerns to us. With one less thing for which you could justify setting aside time, you can keep your focus on building and maintaining positive relationships with your clients, who could also be beneficiaries of your insurance when you take out one of our policies.

Immediate cover for injuries

With both public and products liability insurance – up to the value of £3m – coming as standard with one of our personal trainer insurance policies, if one of your clients claims that either your service or one of your products has led to personal injury, we can help to keep your career on track.

Taking out such cover might seem like unnecessary caution, particularly if you’ve never encountered any such claim, but the financial implications of personal injury claims can be disastrous.

You’ll notice that we haven’t used the terms ‘mandatory’, ‘statutory’ or ‘legal obligation’ with these types of cover. Still, this doesn’t mean that they aren’t essential. The only legal obligation you would have is to, if you were to take on any other members of staff, buy employers’ liability insurance. This cover, which is optional in Fitness Gold personal trainer insurance packages, would protect you from any claims your staff make following an injury sustained while in your service.

Also, were you to take on another member of staff and train them to become personal trainers, too, you could benefit from one of our teacher’s insurance policies. As you can tell by now, we can tailor everything we do around everything you’re doing, so there’s no need to be concerned that, when you take out an insurance policy, you’re buying a ‘fit for all’ package covering you for implausible eventualities.

Covered when your advice goes wrong

This brings us to malpractice cover, which we do offer as standard with any personal trainer insurance policy. Why? It’s because, just like any medical or legal professional, you use your knowledge, judgement and experience to provide advice to your clients and guide them in a certain direction – and, if your advice is followed (or ‘practised’) and leads to personal injury, you could be sued.

Admittedly, this does sound a little like personal liability cover – but there’s a difference. A typical personal liability claim, in your line of work, could be a client dropping a kettlebell on their foot and breaking a metatarsal. However, if you advised a client to follow a particular programme and, in doing so, they suffered a more serious, long-term injury, then you could be sued for malpractice.

Of course, there are steps you can take to protect yourself long before such instances. For instance, if you are asked to train someone with a longstanding injury, you could refuse to begin working with them until you see some sort of evidence from their doctor or physiotherapist, that clears them to train with you. However, if the programme you provide leads to further injury, a malpractice claim may still follow, regardless of prior medical consultation.

Your client’s income is also secure

The final essential cover in any personal trainer insurance policy is financial loss insurance. If one of your clients is unable to work, and this results in their business or the employer for which they work losing money, then this additional cover means that you, your client and their work is all protected. Crucially, it means that your annual or monthly payment towards your insurance will cover you for most or all of any claims made against you.

Fundamentally, insurance is essential in your career as a PT, because injuries are an inevitable part of the job. Whether it’s strictly accidental, or you’re helping somebody get back to full fitness following an injury of their own, even the most experienced of professionals can’t prevent chance occurrences from hindering their work or the progress of their clients.

Also, unless you happen to know all of your clients extremely well, there’s always the chance that somebody could incorrectly blame you for, or even falsify, an injury. Again, such occurrences are rare, particularly those that do reach the point of compensation being owed, but the financial stress it could cause you while you continue working would be immense.

Optional covers for extra security

Finally, from Fitness Gold, you can also source legal expenses cover, which would include a 24-hour helpline for dealing with the legal process, plus cover for your equipment or stock, and personal accident insurance – in case you are unable to work. With all the essentials covered and any optional insurance you feel could benefit your work, you can concentrate on the job you trained for and the work you love, and be dedicated to improving the health of every client you train.