Product liability insurance
Coverwatch places product liability for brands that make, sell, and ship physical goods. We structure it to fit your contracts and respond when a claim lands, not just clear a retailer's checklist.
- Specialty programs for hard-to-place categories
- Retailer endorsements built into every policy
- 60+ carriers shopped for your risk
At a glance
- What it covers
- Injury to other people, or damage to their property, caused by your product.
- What it doesn't
- Repairing, replacing, or recalling the product itself.
Trusted by 60+ carrier partners
What does product liability insurance cover?
Product liability insurance covers claims that a product you made, sold, or distributed injured someone or damaged their property. It pays the third party's bodily injury or property damage claim plus your legal defense. It sits inside general liability and does not pay to recall the product or to replace the product itself.
How we get you covered
We take product liability insurance to 60+ markets, build it to fit your business, and keep it compliant.
Read your risk
We map what could actually go wrong in your operation, where a claim would come from, and who would bring it.
Shop 60+ markets
We take your risk to the carriers that know your class and make them compete on price and terms.
Build the endorsements
We add the endorsement wording that decides whether the policy responds to a claim, beyond the base form.
Keep you compliant
We handle the COIs, additional-insured certs, and renewals, so you are never the one chasing paperwork.
Who needs product liability
Any brand that makes, sells, or ships a physical product. What changes by category is the severity, the exclusions to watch, and the limit you'll be asked to carry.
Ecommerce
Online brands that make, sell, and ship physical goods. Marketplace seller terms also require coverage once you cross a monthly sales threshold.
Supplements
Ingestible and the highest-severity category. The ingredients and additives exclusion has to come off the form.
Food & beverage
Contamination and allergen claims, usually paired with recall exposure on the same event.
Beauty & cosmetics
Skin-reaction and labeling claims. Many forms exclude cosmetics until you buy the coverage back.
Pet products
Treats and chews are ingestibles for animals, so consumables carry elevated severity.
CPG brands
Wide retail distribution multiplies the units in the market and the contracts that demand coverage.
Apparel
Lower severity, but flammability and children's-product rules still drive claims.
What's covered, and what isn't
In the policy
Bodily injury from a defective product
The policy pays a customer's injury claim and your defense when your product hurts them, whatever the defect.
Property damage your product causes
Your product damages a customer's home, equipment, or other property, and their claim and defense are covered.
Failure to warn or inadequate instructions
Claims that your label, warnings, or instructions missed a known risk. This is one of the most common product claims.
Products-completed operations
Harm that surfaces after the product ships and is in use, the part of GL that follows your product into the market.
Legal defense costs
The policy defends you even when a suit is groundless, and for a widely sold product that defense is often the single biggest cost of a claim.
Not in the policy
Recalling the product
Customer notices, pulling units, and storing or destroying stock. The recall itself is excluded.
Covered by Product Recall
Repairing or replacing the product itself
The cost of your own failed product is a business expense, not a third-party liability claim.
Covered by a product warranty, not insurance
Advice, design, or service failures
Harm from professional advice or a service you performed, rather than the physical product.
Covered by Professional Liability / E&O
Known defects and intentional acts
If you shipped a product you knew was dangerous, the claim is denied. Coverage is for accidents.
Pure financial loss with no injury
A product that underperforms with no injury or property damage is a contract or warranty dispute, not a liability claim.
Claims product liability pays
Choking or detached part
A small component separates from a consumer product and a child is injured. As the brand of record, your company is named regardless of which factory built the part.
$250K–$2M
Contaminated ingestible
A food or supplement triggers an adverse reaction traced to the formula or a substituted ingredient, and every customer who consumed it is a potential claimant.
$100K–$5M+
Burn or electrical injury
A device overheats and injures a user or damages their property. Defense alone often runs into six figures before any settlement is paid.
$50K–$1M+
Imported-goods claim
An overseas factory's insurance does not reach a US lawsuit, so the US importer of record funds the defense and any judgment.
$100K–$1M+
Ranges are typical defense and settlement bands for these claim types, not a quote. Actual exposure depends on category, distribution, and limits.
How much coverage you need
There is no standard limit. Two things decide what you actually need, and you carry whichever is higher.
- Your largest contract's floor
- Retailers, marketplaces, and commercial leases will not sign until you carry their minimum. That floor climbs sharply once you sell to the big-box buyers, which is usually when an umbrella goes over your primary policy.
- What a claim in your category costs
- Severity sets the ceiling. A claim over an ingestible like a food or supplement costs far more than one over apparel or home goods, so two brands at the same revenue can need very different limits. Size to a realistic worst case, not the average claim.
- Amazon
- $1M / occ
- Target
- $5M / occ
- Costco
- $5M occ / $5M agg
Kicks in once you pass $10K in monthly sales, on an occurrence form from an A-rated carrier.
Commercial general liability including product liability, before the first purchase order.
Occurrence form with worldwide coverage; additional-insured wording at least as broad as ISO CG 20 15.
- Each occurrence
- $1,000,000
- General aggregate
- $2,000,000
- Products-completed ops aggregate
- Included
- Defense
- Outside the limit
The most the policy pays for any single claim or incident. This is the number most retailer and lease contracts set as their minimum.
The ceiling on everything the policy pays in one policy year, across every claim combined. Once it is used up, coverage is exhausted until renewal.
A separate yearly ceiling that applies only to claims from products already sold and in use. This is the part of the policy that is product liability.
Lawyers' fees are paid on top of your limit, not subtracted from it, so defending a suit does not shrink what is left to settle the claim.
Endorsements that close the gaps
The base form is the start. These add-ons are where the policy gets built to fit your business.
Additional insured, vendors
CG 20 15Names a retailer as additional insured so they accept your certificate and issue the purchase order.
Ingredients and additives exclusion removed
Required for food, supplement, and cosmetic brands. Without it, ingestible claims are excluded outright.
Waiver of subrogation
CG 24 04Most retailer and co-manufacturer contracts require it as a condition of doing business.
Foreign-manufactured products
Extends coverage to goods made overseas where your brand is the US importer of record and the named US defendant.
Questions buyers actually ask
Product liability is a part of a standard general liability policy, not a separate purchase for most businesses. General liability includes a grant called products-completed operations, which is the product liability coverage. The distinction matters because the per-occurrence limit, the products aggregate, and category exclusions decide whether the policy actually responds. Some business owners policies cap product liability at a low sublimit, or exclude ingestibles. That is not the same as a general liability policy built for a product brand.
Product liability pays the third parties your product harms for their injury, their property damage, and your defense. Product recall pays your own cost to pull the product. That covers customer notification, retrieval, warehousing, and destruction. General liability covers the first and excludes the second entirely. A brand that distributes through retail usually carries both. A single contamination event can trigger two costs at once. An injured customer files a liability claim, and you also face a recall expense. Only the liability side sits in the general liability policy.
Two inputs set the number. The first is your largest contract's minimum. The second is what a serious claim in your category could actually cost. Many retailers and leases begin at one million per occurrence and two million aggregate. Entering Target or Costco raises that to five million, usually reached by adding an umbrella over the primary policy. Ingestible categories like food and supplements carry higher severity than home goods or apparel, so they tend to carry higher limits at the same revenue. Take the higher of the two numbers.
Only with a foreign-manufactured products endorsement. As the United States importer of record, your brand is the named defendant in a US lawsuit. An overseas factory's domestic insurance will not fund that defense. Before you rely on the coverage, check the policy for a foreign manufacturing exclusion, which would void coverage for your primary product source. Brands selling private-label or imported goods should confirm the endorsement is in place. They should also collect a certificate of insurance from the manufacturer naming the brand as additional insured.
A business owners policy includes basic general liability, but the product liability inside it is often limited. Many policies cap product liability at a low sublimit. Others carry category exclusions for ingestible products, cosmetics, or electronics that void coverage for the exact claims those brands face. A packaged policy can work for a very early brand with low distribution. A brand with meaningful revenue, retail distribution, or an ingestible product usually needs more. The fix is a standalone general liability policy with explicit product liability terms, not a packaged business owners policy.
As the brand of record, your company is named in the lawsuit regardless of where the defect originated in the supply chain. The co-manufacturer's insurance covers claims arising from their operations, but it does not automatically extend to your brand. A co-manufacturing agreement should require the manufacturer to carry product liability insurance and name your brand as additional insured. It should also include a waiver of subrogation and indemnify you for manufacturing defects. Collect the certificate of insurance before production starts and verify it at every renewal, because the brand carries the claim if the paperwork is missing.
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