The FPA has announced its intention to provide group professional indemnity insurance cover to its members.
The industry body is hoping the initiative will give its members competitive premiums as well as certainty and consistency surrounding their professional indemnity cover.
"We're hoping that with a big pool of members we'll get the benefit of scale and they won't have to do a lot of the administration-type work, which will save them time," FPA chief executive Jo-Anne Bloch said.
"[It will provide] certainty from the point of view that they'll know the terms and conditions meet with the legal requirements and their clients will know they meet requirements so that when it comes to claims there'll be greater certainty of what's covered and what isn't covered."
While consistency was an objective, the FPA did not want to take away its members' ability to determine their own business models, so while consistency in regard to the group cover could be achieved, the way the outcomes would be delivered would vary, she said.
Because of the diversity of business models and claims histories and risk profiles among practices, the FPA also cannot guarantee all members will pay the same premium.
"The idea is that FPA members who are meeting the terms and conditions in the policy should be able to be covered. We'll probably include it in an annual process or something like that," Bloch said.
Tenders for the group cover have been called for and the FPA has declared it would like the service to be in place in the first half of 2008.
"The first round of tendering is an expression of interest which ends in early April. Then there will be a short listing process and we want to really have the policy in place in June because members have a renewal period of June/July."
Chief executive of Hewison and Associates John Hewison has been selected to chair the tender review panel that will oversee the process.
