Insurance protection for professionals including the small business owners, may require two different major types of liability insurance. These two types of insurance that need to be considered: General Liability Insurance and Professional Liability Insurance. Each of these types of insurance policies offer specific and important protections designed to professionals from financial loss.
- General Liability insurance
- This type of liability insurance protect professionals and organizations from the risks of being liable for causing bodily injury or property damage to someone else. If the policy holder is found legally responsible and obligated to pay someone for damages.
- General professional liability for a Bodily Injury claims can be made against a professional and organization even when a third party causes the incident occurs.
- General Liability may also be a risk for Property Damage that might occur when a third party is the direct or indirect cause of property damage. An example of this kind of liability would be “loss of use” coverage. Which gives the insured protection for third party property damage caused to another person’s property.
- General liability insurance fairly easy to purchase and is standardized in many ways. Generally liability insurance is offered by some insurance companies as a part of a package policy. Often these package policies are known as a business office package policy.
- It is common that a general liability policy will exclude professional liability protections. Because it’s important that these types of liability risks are insured separately.
- Professional Liability insurance
- A professional liability insurance policy is specifically written to offer liability insurance coverage for professionals covering the risks of liability arising directly from the result of the professional activities and/or services provided to customers and clients.
- For insurance agents and many other professionals additional Professional Liability insurance includes errors and omissions insurance or E&O.
- Doctors and other medical professionals often need a specific medical malpractice liability policy.
- Professional liability insurance coverage can often be purchased as a stand-alone professional liability policy.
- In many cases a professional liability policy may be written to include coverage for defense costs the professional ma face associated with a claim.
- Professional liability coverage usually excludes any protection for intentional or dishonest acts the policyholder might make
There are two major forms of liability insurance policies that can be purchased. The difference between these forms are how the claims are paid when an insured is found liable. For more information the Blog The Difference between Claims Made and Occurrence Liability Policies may be interesting.
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