Insurance for a pilot program at a customer site

The exhibit that arrives with the pilot

The most common way a robotics or AI company meets commercial insurance is a pilot. A warehouse, a hospital, a utility or a factory agrees to try your machine, and the pilot agreement arrives with an insurance exhibit stapled to the back. The exhibit is the site owner's risk team protecting the site: if your unit hurts someone or breaks something on their floor, they want the claim to land on your insurer rather than theirs.

The exhibit is rarely written for you. It is the template the site owner hands every vendor, from the cleaning contractor to the elevator company, and the asks inside it were sized for those vendors. That is why a ten-unit warehouse pilot can arrive asking for limits that fit a national logistics contractor. Every ask is decodable, and each one is something you carry, something you can add, or something you can negotiate.

What the exhibit usually asks for

The core is general liability at $1M per occurrence and $2M aggregate, with three pieces of wording attached. Additional insured status extends your policy to the site owner for claims arising from your work. A waiver of subrogation stops your insurer from chasing the site owner to recover what it paid. Primary and non-contributory wording makes your policy pay before theirs does. All three are standard machinery that an underwriter prices rather than refuses, and a policy with blanket wording turns them into a certificate request instead of an endorsement.

Workers' compensation with employers' liability follows whenever your people set foot on the site, and it is the ask site owners check hardest, because an injured technician with no coverage becomes their problem. Tech E&O and cyber appear when data flows from the site to your systems: camera feeds, inventory records, patient movement. Equipment evidence is asked for when units stay on site between sessions, and it protects you more than them, since the forklift that crushes your unit at night is theirs and the loss is yours.

The hospital case is the one that surprises founders. A hospital exhibit often asks for $5M of professional liability before a logistics or delivery robot pilots, because the template was written for clinical vendors and medical-device makers. The negotiable parts are the line and the limit: tech E&O in place of medical professional liability, and $1M or $2M for a unit that never touches a patient. The additional insured, waiver and workers' compensation asks are rarely worth arguing. Utilities are the opposite case. They run contractor pre-qualification portals, ask for $5M of general liability through an umbrella, add auto liability if you drive on their property, and hold firm on limits, so the fix is buying the umbrella rather than negotiating the number.

What satisfying the exhibit costs

The certificate itself is free. It is an administrative document your broker issues from a program you already carry, and no site owner should ever be billed for one. There is no published figure for what a pilot adds to premium, because it depends entirely on the gap between what you carry and what the exhibit asks.

The gap is priced by the carrier, item by item. A scheduled additional insured endorsement, a waiver of subrogation, and primary and non-contributory wording are each a small charge on a policy that lacks blanket versions of them. An umbrella to reach $5M is a new policy, rated on the strength of the primaries beneath it. A new line, such as tech E&O for a hospital or auto liability for a utility, is a placement of its own with its own application.

The cheapest exhibit is the one you have already met. A program placed before the first pilot, with blanket additional insured and waiver wording built in, turns most exhibits into a certificate request that costs nothing and takes hours. Buying limits a template asked for before anyone tried to negotiate them is the common way a first pilot overpays.

What the pilot agreement should say

The exhibit covers the insurance; the agreement covers who is liable, and the two must agree with each other. The agreement should state who owns the unit while it is on the customer's floor, which is almost always you, and who bears the loss if their forklift hits it, their sprinkler soaks it, or it disappears from their dock. Without that clause, a damaged unit becomes a dispute between two insurers about whose policy responds first.

The liability clause should say who answers for injury and property damage while the unit runs on their site, and it should match what your policy actually covers. A broad indemnity that makes you liable for the site owner's own negligence goes beyond what a liability policy assumes by contract, and a gap between the indemnity you signed and the coverage you carry is uninsured exposure you created with a pen. Send the agreement to your broker with the exhibit, and have both read together.

One more thing the certificate cannot show. The standard-forms bureau's generative AI exclusions for general liability took effect in January 2026 (Independent Agent magazine, 2025-10-21), and a certificate lists limits and dates, never endorsements. A site owner who accepts your certificate has not confirmed your policy responds to an autonomous unit; only the form does that, and you should know what it says before the unit is on their floor.

The timeline and the sequence

If your program already carries what the exhibit asks, a certificate is a short broker task. If the exhibit needs an endorsement your policy lacks, add the insurer's turnaround, and a new line such as tech E&O or an umbrella takes longer again, because each one is an application, a quote and a bind. An autonomy placement with no existing program takes longest, because fewer carriers have appetite and the file has to be built before anyone quotes it. A pilot start date set before the certificate exists is an avoidable delay.

The sequence that works: send the exhibit and the pilot agreement to your broker the day they arrive, before signature. Matching the asks against what you carry takes minutes and produces a list with prices attached, and anything oversized gets negotiated while the deal is still open rather than after you have agreed to it. We place the program before the first pilot is scheduled, build the blanket wording in, and issue the certificate the same day the exhibit lands.

This page describes coverage in general terms. It is not an offer of insurance, and carrier appetite, policy wording, licensing, and availability govern every quote and every claim.