I’m wondering if anyone has experience with liability insurance. I’m in the process of developing a business plan for a software developing company, and when I got to liability insurance I thought, “I’m working out of my house. I have no customers coming to my home. Software is pretty harmless. This should be relatively inexpensive.”
But when I called up an insurance agent, I was told to look at paying something in the neighbourhood of $10,000. Admittedly he was not experienced with this sort of liability insurance but he seemed to think that for software you needed to look at international coverage as it is a digital medium that is somewhat independent of borders.
Has anyone else looked into this? Should I be concerned? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Several years ago I looked at getting professional liability insurance (errors and omissions) through IEEE - if I remember correctly, the quote I got was between $2000-$2500 a year.
I carried liability insurance in 2007 while I was a contractor (US). It cost me ~$500 a year.
How many people do you need to cover? If it’s just yourself, there is no way it will be $10k. Talk to an insurance agent that actually knows something about liability.
What insurer did you use? I passed on the IEEE offering but didn’t find anything else at the time (my State Farm agent just got confused). I just googled for some providers and found techinsurance.com but some others look like they in the process of going out of business.
Thanks for the info. I’m glad $10,000 doesn’t seem like a starting point. I’ll keep looking into it. I’m also considering talking to a lawyer to get their thoughts on liability and what can be accomplished with documentation.