Much like doing your own accounting without the proper training; finding out what coverage you need can be a difficult endeavor without professional guidance.
Whether you are a seasoned accountant or starting up your own accounting practice, it’s critical that you know where your business is vulnerable and how to protect your livelihood.
We hope to not only point out coverages that your business needs, but to also educate you on why your accounting practice would need these coverages.
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Commercial General Liability for Accountants
When people look at any type of business insurance, their very first step is generally to look at a CGL (Commercial General Liability) policy.
When it comes to commercial insurance liability, there are a lot of options out there. Some types of liability exposures include Premises and Operations Liability, Products Liability, Complete Operations Liability, Personal Injury Liability, and many others.
CGL’s are your first line of coverage. The CGL policy is there to protect your business from the basic “normal” types of lawsuits brought against it. Things such as slip and falls or if you caused damage to someone’s property on a client visit.
These policies will have a slew of exclusions though, so for any accounting practice, you will want to have more coverage than just your everyday CGL policy. The CGL policy will most likely have exclusions for any type of error in your work or any client data exposure. For that reason, it’s important to continue reading to ensure your business is properly covered.
Professional Liability Insurance for Accountants
Accountants are professionals, and as with all professionals, people rely on their work being near perfect. Accounting is a very detail-oriented profession, and as we are all human, mistakes can be made.
When a professional has a lawsuit brought against them as a result of their work, their CGL policy will most likely exclude this coverage. That could leave the professional paying for the lawsuit and the resulting outcome with their own money. It is safe to say, that could result in disaster for your business.
Thankfully there are Professional Liability Insurance packages that are designed to fill that exclusion in order to protect professionals in their line of work.
These Professional Liability packages will respond to lawsuits that were caused by errors or omissions in your professional services or advice. This would be critical coverage for any professional, but especially important for any accounting practices.
Cyber Insurance for Accountants (Cyber Liability)
You may have guessed it already, but your CGL policy will have an exclusion for cyber events. Accounting practices will have a large amount of personal information of their clients stored on their digital devices. This information is surprisingly coveted by cyber attackers. They will either want the data to sell, or they will want to block your access to the data for a ransom payout.
These Cyber Insurance policies will respond to things such as a cyber-attacks, ransomware extortion, or data breaches. Most of these policies will also cover the cost of notifying the clients that their information has been breached and offer a credit monitoring service for your affected customers.
If one thing is painfully clear in the world we live today, it’s that computer security systems are not perfect. Risking your business or your customers data is simply not an option. Any business that stores their customers information for even a short period of time should be operating with a Cyber Insurance policy in today’s world.
The Time is Now
If you have read through this article and noticed that you either don’t have one of these insurance packages for your existing accounting practice, or if you are just starting out and need to get coverage, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Your business is important, and it should be protected with the same gusto that you would protect your home. If you are lacking coverage from your current provider, paying too much, or in need of starting a policy, you’ve come to the right place.
Elliott Insurance Services has been helping businesses protect their employees, family, and clients for over 100 years. Let our experienced insurance professionals help you protect your livelihood.