Insurance For Architects
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We provide various types of business insurance for architects and architectural services in California, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New York, Texas, Washington, and others. Through our network of top rated business insurance carriers, we specialize in Errors and Omissions, Professional Liability, General Liability, and Cyber Liability Insurance for all architects. Our programs are available to individual architects and large architectural firms, and everything in between.
What Types of Insurance Do Architects Need?
The primary business insurance coverage that architects should carry is errors and omissions, or E&O insurance for short, which is also commonly referred to as professional liability and less commonly as professional indemnity. The main purpose of errors and omissions and professional liability insurance is to protect architects against claims from clients such as accusations of mistakes/errors in the architects work. This therefor makes errors and omissions or professional liability the most important type of business insurance that an architect carries. Next we have general liability insurance, which is most commonly carried by architects in order to satisfy contractual requirements with a client or landlord but may also be needed in order to be properly covered against certain types of claims as outlined below. Commercial umbrella insurance, or excess liability coverage, may also be required by contracts with an architect’s clients, in which case an umbrella/excess policy may be needed. Commercial property insurance is also available to architects who own property such as the building that they occupy, along with office contents like computers and office furniture. Cyber liability insurance can often also be important for architects who deal with sensitive client information.
Why Do Architects Need Errors and Omissions – Professional Liability?
Despite the fact that architects are highly trained professionals, mistakes can still happen at any time to even the best architect. Even if no mistake was actually made, just being accused of making a mistake can end up with an architect being on the wrong end of a lawsuit. The legal fees that typically come along with the defense of a lawsuit can in many cases be high enough to cause severe financial harm to any business, especially small sole proprietorships. An errors and omissions insurance policy can provide coverage if you are sued and a claim is awarded, as well pay for defense costs even if no claim is actually awarded. This is why carrying an errors and omissions or professional liability policy is so important for all architects. Having errors and omissions insurance can in many cases also help architects to land larger projects, as it is very common for companies that hire or subcontract work to architects to require that these architects have errors and omissions insurance in place.
Why Do Architects Need General Liability Insurance?
General liability is often confused with errors and omissions (E&O) and professional liability, however they are entirely different coverages with different purposes as described above. General liability insurance policies often pick up where errors and omissions and professional liability policies leave off. This is because errors and omissions insurance in most cases does not offer coverage for claims arising from property damage and/or bodily injury to third parties such as clients or the client’s premises. Often times architects don’t have a large physical risk exposure as they may only work in an office and rarely visit with clients, however there are some architects that often work onsite with clients. In either case, there can often be a need for general liability coverage for most architects. Most commonly, architects maintain general liability insurance coverage either to comply with the contractual requirements of a client or landlord lease requirements when leasing an office. For those architects that do often meet clients on-site and therefore carry a greater risk exposure to claims arising out of injury or damage to property than those architects that only work from an office, a general liability policy should definitely be considered.
We also provide business insurance options for related services such as landscape architects, draftsmen, land surveyors and engineers. For a full listing of the types of business insurance options that we have for architects as well as other types of businesses, please visit our Business Insurance page.
