What is General Liability Insurance

Hey everybody, I'm Rob Freeman and welcome back to Insuring the Built Environment. Thank you for watching this video and if you enjoyed it, you found it useful, please subscribe to my channel at the link above the video. This week we're answering a question about general liability insurance, specifically what is general liability insurance and why is it important for your business to have general liability insurance? Well, general liability insurance protects your business from claims of third party bodily injury and property damage that could arise out of your business operations, could come from an employee's actions at a client site or on your business's premises, and it also protects your business from products that you have sold or services that you have rendered to a third party and it also protects your business from claims of injury to a third party that maybe could arise as a result of your advertising your business and maybe it's claims of misrepresentation or something that another party says that you are doing that's harming them and that's what general liability would cover you for. So a general liability policy can be purchased either on a standalone basis or separately in something that's called a package policy or maybe a business owner's policy or a BOP. And so one of the most important things to note about why general liability insurance is needed for most businesses is because of a coverage in the general liability policy that I didn't mention which covers you for something called contractual liability or liability that you assume in a contract. And so if you're a business owner that's doing deals with other parties and that other party's agreement has something called an indemnification agreement or indemnification clause in it where you are essentially assuming responsibility for liability that arises out of your work and you've agreed to indemnify that party, your general liability policy should cover you for that. However, it's important to note that not every general liability policy is the same. And this is something that I encounter a lot when I review potential clients insurance policies is that they will send me their insurance and then I will read through it and find all sorts of exclusions that mean that the insurance that they have now does not actually cover what they're doing. I see that in the world of solar contracting and other types of solar development, I see that in energy storage, I see that sometimes in other businesses, it's just very common. So it's important to note that general liability policies are not all the same and you should read through your coverage to make sure that you are actually covered for the type of work that you're doing. So if you have questions about general liability, remember it's important to work with a broker who understands your industry and feel free to schedule an appointment with me if you have questions about that. So again, I hope this is helpful and thanks again and have a great day.