Understanding Insurance Policies

General Liability Insurance For Work-At-Home Technology Contractors

16 February 2016

Samantha Reynolds

As a technology contractor who works out of your home office, you may not realize that you should always have a general liability insurance policy in place. General liability insurance protects you and your business against many different types of potential losses from unintended actions that could cause you to be sued by a client.

Here is some additional information about general liability insurance to help you understand why having a policy is vital to protect your small business:

General Liability Insurance Policy Coverage Basics

A general liability insurance policy covers your interests in many different ways, including:

• property damage
• bodily injury
• personal injury

Each of these three things can lead to a loss of your business and your savings if something happens and a client sues you.

Property Damage

In the case of general liability insurance policies, property damage includes both physical property damage and computerized data loss. For example, if you go onsite to meet a client and accidentally knock over a large computer and damage it, then your insurance policy would pay to have the machine repaired or replaced.

If you are working remotely on a client's database and accidentally cause unrepairable damage to their data, then this damage to their business would be covered by your insurance policy. In this case, your general liability insurance policy will pay to cover your client's losses from your unintentional damage.

Bodily Injury

A general liability policy will protect you and your business against claims caused by bodily injury. For example, one of your clients comes to your office and they miss sitting in a chair and land on the floor, injuring themselves. The bodily injury portion of your insurance policy will cover the client's medical bills and cover you in case your client files a lawsuit for pain and suffering.

Personal Injury

For a general liability insurance policy, the term "personal injury" does not refer to a person's physical body, but rather their reputation. For example, if you accidentally speak negatively about one business to another, then you can be sued for slandering their reputation. In this case, your insurance company would pay to defend you in court.

Conclusion

As you can clearly see, having a general liability policy in place is one of the best things that you can do to protect yourself as a work-at-home technology contractor. You can obtain a policy by contacting your insurance agent or searching for coverage options online. Contact a company like Atlantic Insurance & Benefits to get started.

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