Insurance Policies for Tech Startups: What You Should Have

What Insurance Policies for Tech Startups Are Necessary?

I believe we should discuss four specific policies and identify when or what triggers their purchase.

1. D&O (Directors & Officers) Liability Insurance: This is critically important when you close your first round of funding. D&O protects your company’s leadership team from claims alleging wrongdoing in managing the company. Often, your investors will require that you have this coverage before they invest.
We often recommend that your D&O policy include Employment Practice Liability Insurance (EPLI) to protect you and your leaders from claims alleging wrongful employment acts, like harassment, discrimination, wrongful termination, and others. Here is a video that dives into this further: D&O Insurance for Tech Startups 2022

2. Tech E&O (Errors & Omissions) Insurance: Also called Tech Professional Liability insurance, you need to purchase this before selling your product or service to new customers.
This policy protects you if your product or service fails, contains a glitch, or has an error that causes a customer to suffer financial harm or damage, and they sue you for it.
Here is a video on Tech E&O that you can watch: Tech E&O Explained | Technology Errors and Omissions Insurance

3. Cyber Insurance: In the technology space, it’s common to wrap Cyber Insurance into the Tech E&O policy to protect you and the firm from various cyber-related risks such as ransomware attacks, data hacks, fraud, and other threats.
Yes, you guessed it—I take a deeper dive into tech cyber in this video: Tech Company Cyber Insurance 2023

4. Business Owners (BOP) Policy: You’ll likely purchase this at the same time as your Tech E&O and Cyber policy. A BOP covers general liability and property insurance issues and may be necessary sooner if you lease an office or premises, as the landlord will want to ensure you have general liability insurance to cover you and them for slip-and-fall type claims.

Additional Insurance Policies for Tech Startups

What’s left? Then you’ve got issues like

• Workers’ compensation insurance
• Umbrella coverage
• Auto liability
• Crime Insurance
• IP protection
• Business life insurance, and more.

How Do You Get the Coverage?

There are lots of options and choices. For an insurance nerd like me, I get it—but as a tech founder, do you want to be an insurance expert to figure this all out? Or would you rather work with an expert like me to take care of it for you?

I ask that question because a lot of websites that rank high for tech startup insurance are sort of do-it-yourself portals where YOU have to become the expert and decipher what policies to buy, when to buy them, and who to get them from.

Often, a portal will give you just one choice or quote, so how do you know that’s the best choice or price? Unfortunately, you don’t, and that’s where an expert like me steps up.

Then there are the after-sale service issues that come up, which I think are important to talk about. When you work with a firm like mine, you get a dedicated account manager who you can build a relationship with and trust to help you out.

Do you get that level of personalized attention with an online portal? Or do you get a call-center level of support?

Claim Advocacy

And finally, what about claim advocacy? This is where the rubber meets the road.

If you have a claim, we’re in your corner to advocate on your behalf. If you’re working directly with a portal that often is the insurance company, where do you think their allegiances lie? Probably not where they should, and that puts you in a jam when you need help the most.

The bottom line is that working with a skilled broker like The Coyle Group is going to give you choice, convenience, expertise, and long-term support at no extra costs.

What Type of Tech Firms Do We Work With at The Coyle Group?

We have broad experience across the tech spectrum, including tech services and consulting, integrators and resellers, software and system developers, telecom and network service providers, technology hardware manufacturers and distributors, and more.

If you’re a tech founder looking for insurance, we can help simplify the process for you and do all the leg work to get the best results. Give me a call, drop me an email, or book a call on my calendar. Let’s chat. I

I promise no high-pressure sales nonsense—just a conversation to see if we’d be a good fit for you and your firm. I’m pretty sure we will be.

Thanks!