General liability.
When your business injures someone else or damages their property, this is the policy that answers. Nearly every lease and contract assumes you carry it.
One request, shopped across 60+ carriers by a licensed agent.
About three minutes. No obligation.
What it is
What is general liability insurance?
General liability insurance pays when your business injures someone who doesn't work for you, or damages property that isn't yours. It also pays the lawyers who defend you when someone sues, even if the suit is groundless. It is the closest thing commercial insurance has to a default setting.
The policy covers three things: bodily injury and property damage you cause to other people, a category of reputational harms called personal and advertising injury (libel, slander, using a competitor's ad idea), and small no-fault medical payments for minor injuries on your premises. The carrier's duty to defend you sits on top of all of it. It hires and pays defense counsel, and on standard policy forms those defense costs are paid in addition to your limits rather than eaten out of them.
It's also the policy other people check for. Landlords, general contractors, and commercial clients routinely require proof of general liability before they'll sign a lease or a contract, in the form of a one-page document called a certificate of insurance. For most businesses it's the first policy bought and the last one anyone questions.
Who usually carries it
- Contractors and trades: general contractors and landlords want the certificate before you're on site.
- Storefronts with foot traffic: shops, restaurants, salons.
- Service businesses working inside other people's homes and offices: cleaners, landscapers, installers.
- Anyone signing a commercial lease, because the lease almost certainly requires it.
- Vendors, exhibitors, and food trucks asked for proof of coverage before an event.
Coverage
What general liability coverage handles.
Injuries to other people
A customer slips on your floor or a passerby is clipped by debris from your job site: the policy pays the medical bills and, if it gets that far, the settlement.
Damage to other people's property
Your crew cracks a client's countertop, your sign lands on a parked car. When your operations damage property you don't own, this is the coverage that responds.
Products and completed work
If something you sold or work you finished causes injury or damage after the fact, like a railing that gives way months after you installed it, the policy still responds.
Personal and advertising injury
Libel, slander, wrongful eviction, invasion of privacy, and using another business's advertising idea, rarer than slip-and-falls, but just as litigated.
Your legal defense
The carrier investigates, hires the defense lawyers, and pays them even when the suit has no merit, and on standard forms those costs don't reduce your limits.
Medical payments
A small no-fault coverage that pays minor injury bills quickly, largely so small incidents never become lawsuits.
Exclusions: read these first
What it does not cover.
Every policy has edges. Knowing them now is the difference between a covered claim and a surprise.
Your employees' injuries
An employee hurt on the job is a workers' compensation claim, a separate policy, and one nearly every state requires once you hire.
Your own property, or redoing your own work
Your building, tools, and inventory belong on a commercial property policy, and redoing your own faulty work is on you. Only the damage that work causes to other things is covered.
Professional mistakes
Bad advice, a design error, or a missed deadline that costs a client money is a professional liability (E&O) claim, not a general liability one.
Vehicles
Accidents involving autos your business owns or uses are excluded no matter how work-related the errand. That's commercial auto.
Data breaches
A hacked customer database is a cyber claim. Standard general liability forms exclude electronic data losses outright.
Where carriers differ
Everything above describes the standard form. Carriers trim these edges differently with their own endorsements and exclusions, so we read the exact form you'd be buying before you buy it.
A wet floor and a broken wrist
A kitchen-and-bath showroom on a rainy Tuesday. The entry mat is in the back being cleaned, a customer slips just inside the door, and she leaves in an ambulance with a fractured wrist. Surgery, physical therapy, and about five months later, a letter from her attorney.
How the coverage responds: the owner sends the letter to us the day it arrives, we report it to the carrier that afternoon, and the carrier assigns an adjuster and a defense attorney. The owner never negotiates with anyone directly. The investigation finds the store partly at fault, and the carrier settles for the customer's medical bills and lost wages within the per-occurrence limit, paying the lawyers on top of the settlement itself. Uninsured, the owner funds the defense and the settlement personally, and for a small shop that is the kind of bill that gets paid by closing.
An illustrative example, not a real claim. Actual coverage depends on the policy issued.
What moves the price
We don’t quote prices on a website. Anyone who does is guessing. These are the factors underwriters actually weigh.
- What your business actually does: rates are set by classification, and a bakery prices very differently from a roofing crew.
- Payroll and gross receipts: the exposure bases most general liability premiums are calculated against.
- The limits you choose: the per-occurrence limit (the most paid for one incident) and the aggregate (the most paid over the policy term).
- Your premises and location: square footage, foot traffic, and the state you operate in.
- Your claims history: prior liability claims follow the business and raise the rate.
- Whether you use subcontractors, and whether you collect certificates of insurance from them.
- How long you've been in business: newer operations have less track record and often price higher.
Credits that can move this price
The factors above push the price up. These are the named credits that pull it back. Which ones exist, and what they’re worth, varies by carrier and state. We check every one that could apply before we quote.
- Claims-free credit at renewal
- Years-in-business credit for established operations
- Package credit when liability is written with property or inside a BOP
- Underwriter schedule credits for documented safety programs, training, and housekeeping
- Insured-subcontractor handling: certificates on file keep sub payroll out of your premium at audit
- Trade-association and franchise program pricing where your industry has one
Questions
General Liability, asked and answered.
Reviewed by a licensed property & casualty agent · Updated July 2026
Pairs with
Coverage that usually travels together.
- 01Workers' CompensationMedical bills and lost wages when an employee is hurt at work. Required by law in nearly every state, starting with your first hire.Explore →
- 02Commercial AutoLiability and physical damage for vehicles that work for a living, where a personal auto policy stops.Explore →
- 03Professional LiabilityCovers claims that your advice, design, or work cost a client money. Also sold as errors and omissions, or E&O.Explore →
What happens next
A licensed agent reads it
Your request goes to a person, not a queue, the same business day.
We shop the carriers
We quote it across the markets that actually write this line and compare what comes back.
You decide
Options side by side, in plain English. Nothing is bound until you confirm it in writing.
Rather do the whole thing by phone? Call (917) 246-7038.
Carrier count reflects current appointments. Availability varies by state and line.
Start here
Let's price your general liability coverage.
Tell us what you need. We shop it across 60+ carriers. You pick, and nothing is in force until it's confirmed in writing.
About three minutes. No obligation.
