General liability insurance covers third-party bodily injury, property damage you cause to property you do not own, and personal and advertising injury. It is the policy almost every commercial contract, lease and licence names directly, and the one most often assumed to cover more than it does.
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ContinueCore coverage
General liability is broad, but two areas account for the majority of claims and the biggest contract requirements. The rest of the form is what fills in around them.
GL includes claims that emerge after a product is sold or work is completed. The contractor sued six months after finishing a job is claiming against this part, and it usually carries a separate aggregate from the one your day-to-day claims erode.
On most standard ISO forms, defense is paid in addition to the policy limit rather than out of it. That matters more than it sounds: a six-figure defense bill on a form where defense sits inside the limit is a six-figure hole in the money available to settle.
Medical costs, legal defense and settlements for non-employee injuries. A customer slips on a wet floor in your store.
Repair or replacement of third-party property your business damages. Your technician cracks a client's hardwood floor moving equipment.
Defense and damages for libel, slander, copyright in advertising, and false arrest. A competitor sues over a comparison ad.
Small medical bills for non-employee injuries on your premises, with no fault required. A visitor needs urgent care after a minor fall and you pay the bill without litigation.
Claims from products sold or work finished, often with a separate aggregate. A customer is injured by a product you manufactured six months ago.
Where a contract asks for more limit than the policy carries, the answer is usually a layer over the top rather than a bigger primary, and where it asks about your advice the answer is a policy that answers for your advice instead. Rosella places the primary and whatever sits over or beside it as one programme, because the gap between two policies is where a claim goes looking. That is also true of the wider business insurance stack when a business outgrows a single form.
Who is buying
Almost any business that interacts with customers, vendors or other people's property carries this exposure. What changes is which part of the form does the work, and what the contract in front of you demands on top.
Often required by your licensing board, by the general contractor on a project, or by the property owner before your crew can start.
Professional services firms and online-only businesses carry it too, and both are skipped more often than they should be. A desk-based business still takes visitor injury and advertising injury claims, and advertising injury exposure exists the moment you run a campaign or publish a product comparison. Most client contracts require the policy either way.
The policy pays for the harm your work causes to other people and their property. It does not pay to put your own work right. That is the single line most often discovered during a claim rather than before one.
Four places the line falls, and which side each lands on:
Covered: A customer slips on your floor and is injured. Third-party bodily injury, and on most forms your defense costs sit on top of the limit rather than inside it.
Not covered: Your repair fails and the client sues to have the work redone. The “Your Work” exclusion: this is a liability policy, not a workmanship warranty.
Covered: Your technician cracks a client's floor moving equipment. Third-party property damage.
Not covered: One of your own employees is injured on the job. That is workers compensation, and your own crew is not a third party.
The timing matters as much as the trigger. Claims from work you finished land against your products and completed operations aggregate, which is a separate limit from the per-occurrence one and is quietly the first to run out on a busy book. Worth understanding what your contract asks the certificate to say before you assume a finished job is behind you.
The gaps
Most operators are caught by what is not in the policy rather than by what is. Naming the gaps in advance is considerably more useful than discovering them during a claim. Eight that matter on a CGL schedule.
WHAT YOU NEED
Workers compensation, which is a statutory scheme rather than a liability policy. The people on your payroll sit outside this form entirely.
WHAT YOU NEED
Commercial property. The policy responds to other people's property, not to yours.
WHAT YOU NEED
Commercial auto, with hired and non-owned added for the car nobody scheduled. Once a wheel is turning, this form has stopped responding.
WHAT YOU NEED
Professional liability. If you specified it or advised it, that is advice, and this policy does not respond to advice.
WHAT YOU NEED
Carrier and endorsement dependent, and the one gap on this page with no clean answer. Price the possibility of rework into the job rather than expecting a policy to carry it.
WHAT YOU NEED
No market writes this and no endorsement fixes it. Every other card on this page has a solution; this one does not.
WHAT YOU NEED
An environmental policy or a contractor's pollution endorsement. E&S carriers often attach a Total Pollution Exclusion broader than the standard form's.
WHAT YOU NEED
A separate liquor liability policy, the moment you serve, sell or furnish alcohol.
Contractual liability beyond an insured contract is the ninth, and it is the one that needs the contract read rather than a card on a page. Bring the agreement to the conversation. If you carry staff, bring the question of cover for employee injury with it, because the two are underwritten off the same payroll.
What it hands off
Almost nobody buys this policy by choice. It arrives as a line in a lease, a licence condition or a subcontractor agreement. That makes the useful question not what it covers, which the contract already assumes, but which of your exposures it quietly leaves somewhere else.
The “Your Work” exclusion means a failed repair the client wants redone is generally your cost, while the damage that failure caused is generally covered. Where the line falls depends on the carrier and the endorsements, and some carriers attach CG 22 94 to strip out cover for your subcontractors' work as well. For a general contractor that is the difference between a policy and a piece of paper.
The moment you specify, design, size or recommend, you are giving advice, and this policy does not respond to advice. Consultants know that. Contractors doing design-build frequently do not, and the gap only shows up when somebody argues the specification rather than the workmanship.
Including the employee who runs a parts collection in their own car, which is hired and non-owned cover and is missed constantly. A commercial auto policy stops at the vehicles listed on it, and the schedule is rarely as current as the fleet.
None of this is hidden. It is printed on the form, and reading the form is the job the broker is for. Terms vary between carriers far more than price does, which is why we compare wordings first and premiums second. The same applies to what your contract asks the certificate to say, which is answered from your agreement and not from a template.
Speak to our teamEndorsement check
Each line below changes the endorsements a standard CGL has to carry. Nothing here is priced and nothing here is a quote. It shows which parts of the form your placement has to negotiate.
What the form has to carry
Tick what applies and the endorsements it implies appear here.
Print this and put it beside your schedule at renewal. Anything ticked here that the schedule does not name is a conversation to have before the policy incepts, not after a claim.
Speak to our teamCost
There is no flat answer because there are too many inputs, and any number quoted without seeing your operation is a guess dressed up as a price. The drivers are consistent across carriers, and six of them move a premium more than the rest.
The largest single driver. Construction and physical-risk classes pay multiples of what office-based classes pay, and a misclassification is worth auditing before renewal.
Recent losses raise a premium, sometimes sharply. A clean five-year history is worth real money and is the cheapest thing on this list to have.
Revenue generally tracks exposure, and payroll is the rating base in some classes, construction especially. Carriers check both at audit.
State, county and sometimes ZIP code move the rate. Litigious jurisdictions cost more, and the difference is not marginal.
Carriers generally price the step from $1M to $2M aggregate at well under double, so the second million is the cheapest one you will ever buy. Each piece of wording a contract demands is separately rated on top of it.
Carriers want to know whether you sub work out, and whether you collect certificates from those subs. An uninsured sub's work becomes your claim.
Three marks means the input carries more weight in a general liability rating than the others shown. The scale is comparative and descriptive. It is not a rate, and nothing on this page is a quote.
Low-risk classes such as consulting and online services sit at the bottom of the market and high-risk classes such as general contracting sit at the top, which is why a single figure on a page is worthless to either of them. Premium is also not the whole cost. Carrier responsiveness on certificates, endorsement turnaround and claims handling all matter more once you are actually using the policy.
Talk to an expertProcess
We understand your business first, then take it to the carriers who want to write it. An advisor walks you through the options and what they cost. No two files are the same, so what follows is the shape of a placement rather than a script.
What you do, where, with how many people, and what your contracts oblige you to carry. Those answers decide which markets will look at the file at all, and how much of the rest of this applies to you.
One set of information goes to underwriters with genuine appetite for your work rather than whoever happened to quote last renewal. When quotes come back our brokers read the forms side by side, because coverage terms vary between carriers more than premium does.
A main contractor wants proof before your crew can start, and this is how COIs get issued here. We read the certificate request against your contract so it asks the carrier for the wording that contract needs rather than a generic form that usually fails review.
No federal law mandates it, but it is required in practice. Licensing boards, commercial leases, vendor agreements and subcontractor contracts routinely require it before you can trade or start work.
$1M per occurrence and $2M aggregate is the common floor for a subcontractor. Larger commercial general contractors increasingly ask for $5M aggregate, usually reached with an umbrella layer over the top rather than a bigger primary.
No. Employee injury is workers compensation. General liability responds to third parties, and your own crew is not a third party.
Generally not. The “Your Work” exclusion means the rework is usually your cost, while the damage that work caused to other property is usually covered.
On most standard ISO forms they are paid in addition to the limit. Some forms pay them from inside it, which materially reduces what is left to settle with. It is worth knowing which one you have before a claim rather than during one.
It extends your policy to somebody your contract names, usually a landlord or a general contractor. Contracts specify particular endorsement forms and a generic one frequently fails review, which is why the certificate request should be read against the contract rather than answered from a template.
Yes, under personal and advertising injury: libel, slander, copyright in your advertising, and false arrest. It is the part online-only businesses most often assume they do not need.
Usually yes. Advertising injury exposure exists the moment you run a campaign, and most client contracts require the policy regardless of where the work happens.
Get started
If you have a contract requirement on your desk, a lease renewal coming up or a carrier non-renewal you did not see coming, we can move. We compare the forms rather than just the price, because the terms vary between carriers more than the premium does.
