Products and completed operations
Injury or damage caused by what you made, including claims that arrive years after the sale. The aggregate here is separate and it is the one that matters.
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Manufacturing
and distribution
insurance
Your finished product leaves the building and keeps generating exposure for years. Manufacturing programs get built around products liability and downtime, not around the building.
Downtime is the loss
For most manufacturers the property claim is survivable and the eight months of lost production is not. Business income limits deserve more attention than the building limit.
The program we build
The pieces, and what each one is actually for.
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General liability
Premises and operations, plus vendors endorsements for the distributors and retailers who will demand additional insured status before they carry your product.
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Property and equipment breakdown
Buildings, stock, and machinery. Equipment breakdown covers the mechanical and electrical failure that a property form specifically excludes.
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Business income and contingent BI
Your downtime, plus downtime caused by a supplier or a customer going offline. Contingent coverage is what responds when the loss happens at someone else's plant.
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Product recall
The cost of pulling product back, notifying customers, and disposing of it. Standard liability policies pay for harm caused, never for the recall itself.
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Workers' compensation
Machine guarding, ergonomics, and lifting drive this class. Loss control engagement is worth real money at renewal, not just goodwill.
Read this part
The exposures underwriters ask about first
Manufacturing submissions live or die on the product description and the loss control story.
- End use of the product. The same widget is priced very differently if it ends up in an aircraft, a medical device, or a lawn chair.
- Export and international sales, which change both jurisdiction and the litigation environment you are exposed to.
- Private label and contract manufacturing, where you carry the liability but not the brand.
- Hold harmless agreements with suppliers and customers, and whether your contractual liability coverage actually backs them.
- Machine guarding, lockout tagout, and forklift certification, which are the first three things a workers' compensation loss control visit checks.
How we build a manufacturing program
Work the inputs before working the market.
Step 01
Describe the product properly
Materials, process, end use, annual units, and where it is sold. A vague product description is the single most common reason a submission gets declined without a quote.
Step 02
Model the downtime
Longest lead time machine, single points of failure, and realistic replacement timelines. That analysis sets the business income limit and the period of indemnity.
Step 03
Document loss control
Written safety program, machine guarding audit, and training records. Manufacturing is one of the classes where carriers will send an engineer, so be ready for the visit.
Step 04
Layer the liability
Primary products limits with an umbrella sized against your largest customer's contract requirement, not against your revenue.
Operations we place
Metal fabricationFood and beverage productionPlastics and injection moldingElectronics assemblyMachine shopsFurniture and millworkBuilding productsPackagingWholesale distributionWarehousing and 3PLPrintingContract manufacturing
Not on the list is not the same as not placeable. Ask.
Questions we get
Straight answers.
A customer wants to be named as an additional insured on our products coverage. Is that normal?
It is standard for distributors and big box retailers. It is done with a vendors endorsement, which is broader than a standard additional insured form and which some carriers charge for. Get it confirmed in writing before you sign the supply agreement.
Do we need recall coverage if we have products liability?
They pay for different things. Products liability responds when your product hurts someone. Recall responds when you have to get it back before it hurts anyone. For food, beverage, and anything with a regulator, recall is the one that gets used.
How do we get our workers' compensation rate down?
Machine guarding, a written return to work program, and challenging stale reserves on open claims. Those three do more for a manufacturing mod than shopping the policy ever will.
Next step
Send us the submission
Loss runs, current declarations, and five minutes of context. You will hear back the same business day with what we can do and which markets we are approaching.