Franchisee Insurance

Commercial general liability (CGL) insurance helps protect you, your business and your employees from claims involving bodily injury or damage to others’ property, up to the limits of your policy. For example, if a customer of your business slips and is injured, your CGL policy could help pay for the customer’s medical expenses.

Workers’ compensation helps cover medical expenses and lost wages for an employee who suffers a job-related injury. Depending on your location, workers’ comp may be a legal requirement for your business. It usually does not cover business owners or officers (unless added to the policy), and may have state limitations depending on your domicile location.

Higginbotham offers business interruption coverage for the franchise industry, which pays for loss of income, employee salaries and continuing expenses related to food borne illness outbreaks and workplace violence. It protects against accidents and malicious contamination, extortion threat, denial of access and supply failure, all of which can temporarily shut down your operation.

Commercial auto insurance helps protect your business from financial loss because of legal liability for automobile-related injuries to others or damage to others’ property by an automobile.

Hired and non-owned auto insurance (HNOA) is a specific type of commercial auto insurance. It’s usually held by small business owners who rent or lease vehicles or who ask employees to use their personal vehicles for business purposes.

HNOA insurance generally does not cover:

• Repair costs for the leased, rented or employee-owned vehicle
• Incident that occur while employees are commuting to work
• Incidents that occur while employees are running personal errands during the workday (for example, if an employee drives home while on their lunch break)

Business property insurance helps cover the property and facilities owned or leased by your business. This could include the buildings themselves and the equipment, tools, inventory and furniture stored inside buildings or on the property. It can help protect your business property from risks like fire, theft, burst pipes and wind damage.

Commercial umbrella insurance provides excess liability protection over the primary limits in your automobile, general liability and other commercial insurance policies. In doing so, it provides your business with additional limits of insurance. Excess liability insurance does not cover property or any coverage that is not scheduled on the policy.

Cyber liability insurance can cover a variety of liability and property losses that may result when your business is engaged in electronic activities, such as e-commerce or internal electronic data collection. Cyber coverage also helps cover your business’s liability for a data breach in which your customers’ personal information is stolen or exposed by a hacker or cyber criminal. While it does not cover theft of client information by employees, a cyber liability policy can help cover a variety of data breach expenses, such as:

• Notification costs
• Credit monitoring
• Fines and penalties
• Costs to defend claims by state regulators
• Loss resulting from identity theft

Employment practices liability insurance (EPLI) offers protection against claims from current or former employees alleging wrongful acts. It helps to pay the cost of defending claims of wrongful termination, sexual harassment, failure to hire or promote, discrimination and other improper employment practices. While EPLI coverage will not pay for fines or penalties imposed by the court, it can help to cover punitive damages where permitted by law.

Directors and officers (D&O) insurance is a form of professional liability coverage that protects the directors, officers and trustees of an organization from claims alleging financial loss due to mismanagement. It helps to prevent these leaders from suffering personal losses due to lawsuits alleging wrongful acts or illegal business activities. Typically, D&O insurance does not cover liability for fraud or criminal misconduct, but it can help safeguard directors and officers against unintended transgressions and some forms of negligence.