Occurrence-based indemnity – the type Medical Protection provides in New Zealand – protects you for incidents that occur during your period of membership, even if after the problem arises many years later. Providing you were in membership and paying the correct subscription at the time of an incident that’s given rise to a case or claim, we can protect you even if you’re no longer in membership or retired.

Claims-made indemnity is what insurance policies are usually based on. This type of indemnity protects you for incidents related to your practice that arose, and are reported during, a continuous period of membership. This means that if a problem became apparent outside that period, you would not be able to seek assistance unless you bought ‘run off’ cover (also known as Extended Reporting Benefit). This can be expensive, and limited to a set number of years, whereas medicolegal problems can arise even decades after the event.

As soon as you can. Unlike some insurers we don’t have to wait until a claim is made to help – if you receive a complaint, for example, our experts can help you prepare the best response in order to prevent the situation escalating. Or if you just need some advice – contact our medicolegal advice team.

Retroactive Reporting Benefits (RRBs), sometimes known as ‘nose cover’, allow you to maintain continuity of indemnity or insurance cover when switching from a claims-made insurance provider to Medical Protection’s occurrence-based membership.

RRBs offer you protection for incidents that happened before you became a member. This means that if, after you join Medical Protection and are in your first five years of membership, you become aware of an incident that occurred at any time while you were insured by another provider, you can report it to us and request assistance should it lead to a claim or a complaint. You cannot report an incident which you were aware of before you joined Medical Protection, as this should have been reported to your previous insurer.

Click here to download a leaflet with more information about our RRBs or contact us to get a quote.

Because the indemnity we protect you with is discretionary, we have the flexibility to help even in the most unusual circumstances, or where a new problem appears. This is very different to insurance, where policies include fixed terms and exclusions. It is only in exceptional circumstances that we’re unable to help – for example, if a member wasn’t in membership when the incident occurred, had underpaid their subscription or underdeclared their scope of work.