PI for software developers and SaaS businesses covers claims that your product or services caused customers a financial loss.
Source: https://piinsurance.com.au/software-developers/, fetched from the preview https://pi-react-4ee768.pages.dev/software-developers/ on 10 Nov 2026; site dated 3 Nov 2026. Preview wording, not yet broker-reviewed. General information, not advice.
Site label: Usually asked for in client contracts.
Why you need it: your clients
Customers and enterprise buyers ask for PI, often combined with cyber cover.
Typical limits
$1m to $5m, with cyber.
Work that gets a closer look
- What your software is used for. End use matters as much as the type of work. Medical devices and clinical systems, fire, security and emergency systems, energy, manufacturing process control and anything in an aircraft system are the highest risk.
- Custom or packaged. Packaged software is lower risk. Custom builds can fail or run late. Control-system software is higher again, because an outage on a production line causes losses fast.
- Hosting your customers' data. SaaS, cloud and hosting are treated as medium to high hazard. Insurers ask how stored data is kept private and secure, where it is physically held, and what happens to it if a customer leaves or you become insolvent.
- US customers. US work usually costs more to insure. Smaller firms often get a lower limit for it, insurers want consequential loss excluded in US contracts, and cover for intellectual property claims there is often excluded or limited.
Cover gaps to know about
- Data breaches and security incidents are now mostly a matter for a cyber policy, not PI. Ask about cyber cover alongside.
What can go wrong
Illustrative scenarios, not real claims.
An outage across customers
A bug in your platform takes customers offline for a day and several claim lost income.
Software that miscalculated
Your pricing module rounds wrongly for months.
How claims usually happen
A typical pattern, not a real claim
A billing module rounds a figure wrongly. Nobody notices for months. Each error is small, but together they become one large claim.
- The software does not do what the contract said, or arrives late.
- An outage costs customers sales or production.
- Most disputes tie back to scope: what was promised against what was built.
How most PI claims start The same pattern across consulting, engineering and IT, and what is and is not covered.
Common exclusions to watch
- Your own data breach (cyber)
- Contractual service credits
- Work before the retroactive date
Wording differs between policies. Read the policy wording, or ask us to point out what it says.
Common questions
Do software developers and SaaS need professional indemnity insurance?
Customers and enterprise buyers ask for PI, often combined with cyber cover.
How much PI cover do software developers and SaaS need?
$1m to $5m, with cyber.
Why do IT policies combine PI with public and products liability?
Courts have disagreed about whether software is a product or a service. With separate policies, a claim could fall in the gap between them. Combining PI with public and products liability in one policy closes that gap, and it has been the market standard for many years.