Protecting your business against liability
When you’re involved in the running of a business, you’ve got a lot to think about. Liability should be near the top of that list. No matter what line of business you’re in, whether you’re a contractor, an automotive dealer or a grocer, you need to protect yourself against the threat of liability claims and lawsuits.
What is liability?
Liability is when your company is held responsible for damages or losses to a third party in the eyes of the law.
First things first, what exactly is liability? Well, it’s when your company is held responsible for damages or losses to a third party in the eyes of the law. This can arise from your premises, operations, products and completed operations. Let’s simplify that a bit with an example: if someone is visiting your premises, and they are injured, or their property is damaged, you may be held responsible for any resulting costs. Liability claims can result in very costly lawsuits.
You may not think you have even done anything wrong and still find yourself involved in a lawsuit. This can lead to a serious blow to your finances, not to mention the impact it can have on your reputation with your clients and customers. That’s where insurance comes in. And Federated Insurance can help with that.
What is Commercial General Liability Insurance?
Commercial General Liability (CGL) is the foundation to any liability insurance program for business owners.
Commercial general liability, or CGL for short, is the foundation to any liability insurance program for business owners. It’s designed to protect business owners if they are found legally liable for bodily injuries or property damage to a third party.
So, if you’re a contractor who installs a sink in a home and later, there’s a leak resulting in water damage throughout the house, your CGL policy could help. Or, if you own a grocery store, and someone slips while visiting the frozen foods section and injures themselves, you’d look to your CGL policy to help with the costs that you may incur from the accident.
Here at Federated Insurance we like to cover all the bases. That’s why we offer our customers commercial general liability policies that include bodily injury/property damage liability, personal and advertising injury liability, employee benefit program liability, and medical payments.
What other policies does Federated Insurance offer to protect against liability?
While CGL will protect your business against a number of losses, sometimes it isn’t enough on its own. So we have a number of other offerings to make sure your business is covered for the unexpected, including:
Commercial umbrella liability insurance
In order to protect your business against really large liability losses, a commercial umbrella liability policy is needed. It’s a separate policy that provides higher limits of coverage and can extend to other insurance coverage types such as automobile liability. With commercial umbrella liability coverage, policy holders will have increased protection.
Pollution liability insurance
Most general liability policies either exclude or severely limit pollution liability coverage. But we can protect you from environmental exposures with our pollution liability insurance policy. For instance, businesses that store fuel on their premises can protect themselves if fuel were to leak from those tanks causing third party environmental damage or damage to their own property.
Can you prevent claims from happening entirely?
While insurance is crucial to protect your business following an accident, nothing can eliminate risks altogether. But you can work to mitigate them, and we can help you! This is where the Federated Insurance Risk Services programs come in.
We’ve developed exclusive programs and services to help you enhance workplace and employee safety – a must in any business. Our Risk Services specialists are available to help you create, implement and maintain a company safety program. They can also provide you and your employees with valuable safety advice and answer any questions you may have throughout the process.
