The short answer
General liability responds to bodily injury and property damage you cause to third parties. Professional liability, also called errors and omissions, responds to financial loss a client suffers because of your advice, design, or service. Neither covers the other's territory.
Which claims fall where
The test is what kind of harm occurred.
- Client trips over your equipment at their office: general liability.
- Your design error costs the client $200,000 in rework: professional liability.
- You damage a client's server rack while installing: general liability.
- You configure the server wrongly and they lose a day of trading: professional liability.
- A defamation claim about a competitor: general liability's personal and advertising injury section.
Claims-made vs occurrence
Professional liability is almost always claims-made, meaning it responds only if the policy is in force when the claim is made. Let it lapse and past work becomes uninsured — which is why tail cover matters when you retire or switch insurers. General liability is usually occurrence-based, responding to incidents during the policy period whenever the claim arrives.
Match cover to your contracts
Upload your policies and a client contract to PolicyPal and we tell you whether your limits, forms, and additional-insured wording satisfy what the contract requires.
Frequently asked
- Do I need both?
- If you give advice and also meet clients or work on their premises, yes. Many client contracts require both explicitly.
- What is tail cover?
- An extended reporting period on a claims-made policy that lets you report claims after the policy ends for work done while it was in force.
- Does a BOP include professional liability?
- No. A BOP includes general liability and property; professional liability is always separate.
Your policy is the only source of truth
Stop guessing. Check your actual policy.
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