What is Product Liability Insurance?

What is product liability insurance? Why do you need it? Where do you get it? Good questions. Hi, Ryan Hanley here, founder and president of Rogue Risk, where we do insurance differently, specifically by giving you knowledge and information to make the right insurance decision. If you like this content, smash that like button. It helps other business pros like yourself find it When it comes to product liability, there are a few types of businesses and industries where product liability is incredibly important. And that is really anyone having to do with manufacturing or the creation of goods that can be distributed. And this is where product liability really picks up. If there is a defect, a malfunction, even a failure to warn someone about the usage or possible issues related to that product, and something comes up, there's a claim, an issue, something bad happens, and you are sued, product liability is actually going to be the portion or the actual coverage that's going to respond. Now, I used the word portion before. That's because oftentimes product liability for many classes of business is included in a commercial general liability policy, which is really a package of liability coverages. And you may see kind of products slash completed operations as the name of the coverage limit. And you'll see probably if it's a standard policy, you see a million per occurrence with a $2 million aggregate. That's pretty standard. It's not always that case. Make sure you double check your policy. But in the case of product liability, it is picking up a specific portion of your liability. And the language associated with that aspect of the policy has to do with defects in products. So what would be an example of that? We have a client who creates parts for bicycles. So if one of those parts that he's manufacturing or his business is manufacturing, if one of those parts is defective, it goes into a bicycle and then it breaks or malfunctions and someone gets injured or something bad happens, that's products liability. If he didn't have products liability for that specific, for his business, and if that specific part wasn't covered under products liability, then he would have no coverage. And this is something that I want to be very upfront about and something you need to think through, especially if you're a manufacturer or a creator of any kind of good. And that is that you may need a separate product liability policy, depending on what you create, if you have to do with anything automotive. We have another client here who makes the covers for calipers for cars. And in that scenario, we actually got them commercial general liability and then had to, but the products were actually carved out. And then we had to get a separate product liability policy, which specifically covered the parts. And that's because anything having to do with automotive, very few companies will be interested at all in covering the product liability. So we had to go work with a separate carrier who writes product liability for automotive parts. So as you can see, product liability, while straightforward for many companies, can be something that you need to do a little extra work on to find the right carrier to actually make sure you're covered. So don't assume you have product liability. Ask the question, particularly if you're creating something, if you're manufacturing something, we want to be very careful of product liability because you can think you have it. And from your line of business, your class of business, whatever you're creating, it could actually be specifically excluded from your policy. So don't let that happen to you. Ask the question. And if you have questions and feel like you're not getting the right answers, you can always reach out to us. There's a, I'm sure there's a link somewhere around this video that you can click on, or you can always email us at gorogue at roguerisk.com or give us a call 855-960-6600. We look forward to working with you.