It’s a fact of business life that almost all companies require some form of liability insurance. The most common types are public liability insurance, employer’s liability insurance and cyber liability insurance. Indeed, some businesses are compelled by law to have public liability insurance before they can operate.
Generally speaking, any business that interacts directly with the public or clients should seriously consider buying public liability insurance. This is particularly true if you visit client premises or if members of the public come to your workplace. Having
public liability insurance covers your company against damages awarded by the courts should a member of the public be injured or property is damaged as a result of negligence by your company. Normally, public liability insurance also covers legal fees, costs and expenses.
Employer’s liability, meanwhile, differs in that every business, with the exception of sole traders, are legally bound to have employer’s liability. Even limited companies where the only employees are the working directors are required to have employers insurance. This is because the limited company is a separate legal entity and as such is regarded in the eyes of the law as the employer. To conform to the statute book, the policyholder must be named as the limited company. The purpose of employers liability insurance is to cover company employees against injury, illness or disease directly attributable to their employment.
Depending on the individual circumstances of your company, it is possible to buy each form of liability insurance separately. Though it is usual for public liability and employers liability insurance to be included in most combined business insurance deals.
A more recent addition to the liability insurance scene is cyber liability insurance. As e-commerce grows and the internet pervades deeper into daily life, the arrival of cyber liability insurance was inevitable. What this does is protect companies against losses and liabilities resulting from the use of the internet, computer networks and email. As companies do an increasing amount of business online and use the internet as a sales and communications channel, the technology has brought a fresh set of risks. These range from libel and slander to breach of intellectual property rights, privacy, confidentiality and Data Protection infringements, and third party financial losses. And that’s without even mentioning all the other inherent risks of the web like hacking, phishing and viruses.
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