Commercial General Liability
What is Commercial General Liability?
CGL or Commercial General Liability is a policy that protects your business against Personal and Advertising Injury, Financial Loss and Property Damage caused as a result of your employee or business operations. In short- it covers Non-Professional Negligent Acts.
Here are a few situations in which your business could be made responsible for paying various costs.
- While visiting your business a customer trips on loose flooring and is injured.
- An employee in your flooring Installation business accidentally breaks a water pipe while working, causing considerable damage to a customer’s home.
- A class action lawsuit is filed against your business, declaring one of your advertisements contained misleading information.
What does Commercial General Liability Cover
A general liability insurance policy usually covers costs for legal defense and will pay on your behalf all damages (up to the limits of your policy) if you are found liable. Lawsuit can have an extremely negative financial impact on a business and because such liability suits happen so frequently (especially in California) this is one of the most common and important types of coverage for any business.
Some of the things General Liability Does not cover
CGL policies can come with certain Exclusions written into the policy forms. Its important that you have these exclusions brought to your attention when purchasing insurance. Also, things like employee related injuries, commercial vehicles need to be covered under separate lines of commercial insurance. In some situations, certain hazards or theft are also excluded.
CGL Is a standard and basic coverage which does not insure against everything. So many policies exist, that combine with CGL. Some of these coverages include: Commercial Auto, EPLI, Workers Compensation, Directors & Officers, and Pollution Liability. Depending on Operations, some businesses are considered higher risk and require additional lines of insurance in order to properly protect themselves.
Depending on your type of business operations, you may want to consider additional liability coverage that is not part of commercial general liability insurance. At BIS we offer complementary lines of insurance that work along-side your CGL.