Why it matters for your company
General liability needs something physical to go wrong. Tech E&O covers the claim where nothing broke and money was still lost: a model that misclassified inventory for weeks, an integration that corrupted order data, an agent that executed the wrong transaction.
The label on the form matters less than its definitions. A policy that defines professional services to include your model's output and your autonomy stack's decisions is placed for your business. One written for a consultancy may argue those were never services at all. Tech E&O is often sold combined with cyber, and each half needs reading on its own terms.
Related terms
- First-party and third-party cyber coverageFirst-party cyber pays your own costs after an attack, such as forensics, notification and lost income. Third-party cyber pays claims others bring against you for a breach, such as customers suing over exposed data.
- Claims-made and occurrence policiesAn occurrence policy responds to incidents that happen during the policy period, whenever the claim is filed. A claims-made policy responds to claims first made during the policy period, subject to its retroactive date.
- Retroactive dateThe date on a claims-made policy before which a wrongful act is not covered, even if the claim is made during the policy period. Keeping it unchanged across renewals and insurer changes protects past work.
- Silent AIAI-related risk that a policy neither expressly covers nor expressly excludes, so whether it responds depends on how general wording is read after a loss. The term borrows from silent cyber.
- Contractual liabilityLiability you take on by agreeing to it in a contract, most often through an indemnity clause that makes you pay for a customer's losses. Policies respond to some of it and exclude the rest, so the clause and the form have to be read together.
- General liabilityThe policy that responds when your business operations or products injure someone outside the company or damage property you do not own. It is the first line most contracts and leases require.