Umbrella / Excess Insurance Policy

Umbrella Insurance for NH Businesses

When a catastrophic liability loss occurs, an umbrella insurance policy can mean the difference between a business surviving, or not.

The rising costs of lawsuits and judgments are important for today’s business owner to consider. Catastrophic liability losses can happen to any business at any time, and a commercial umbrella policy protects you when those losses exceed your basic liability coverage. Contact us today to talk about how commercial umbrella insurance could benefit your business or to review your current commercial umbrella insurance policy.

Does my business need umbrella coverage?

No matter how professionaly your business is run, or how benign your operations are, there is always the chance that you could find yourself facing a calamitous claim arising from an unexpected event or accident.   A client could simply be walking down your stairs when they trip and fall which leads to traumatic brain injury. Now you have a law suit on your hands, seeking medical payment, legal payments and punitive damages. I’m sure you can imagine how these costs could quickly amount to a significant financial obligation for your business. Luckily, you have general liability to cover everything! Oh wait, your $1,000,000 liability limit has been exhausted by the medical bills alone.

Fortunately, your excess coverage kicks as a safety net and preserves the financial viability of your company which  otherwise, would have been annihilated.

Umbrella Coverage 101

Umbrella or Excess Liability coverage is a policy written to lie over various underlying liability policies (your “primary” ). These primary policies may include your business auto policy, commercial general liability policy, employers liability coverage and so on. 

Serving two general purposes:

1. It expands the limits of your underlying policies by dropping down to supplement both per occurence and aggregate limits. IE: If your commercial general liability policy has a $1 million coverage limit to pay for any one claim, and a $2 million aggregate limit of coverage for the policy term, a $2 million umbrella would increase those limits to $3 million per occurence and $4 million aggregate.
2. Not only does it expand coverage…It can be set up to broaden your coverage for things that your primary policies may not cover. IE If your auto policy is designated to cover claims arising from vehicle use in a certain area, an umbrella policy could expand the coverage territory, depending on how your policy has been setup.