Professional & General Liability Insurance Coverage Limits
Limits are a truly vital part of your massage therapy insurance policy. You’ve probably heard that one policy has a million dollars in coverage while another has two million. But what does all of this really mean? Here, we’ll deep dive into coverage limits to help you understand just what you’re getting with a policy.
Professional Liability Insurance Limits
Professional liability insurance is often called malpractice insurance. Malpractice literally means “bad practice” and is leveled against professionals when a client is hurt or has their property damaged because of the session they paid for. Professionals in all industries hold some form of professional liability. A liability is something you have a legal obligation to pay. So putting it all together, professional liability insurance is protection from having to pay for someone being hurt or having their property damaged as a result of being under your care and supervision.
Professional liability insurance limits are $2 million per occurrence with a $3 million individual annual aggregate. This means that you have all the way up to $2 million for a single claim event. For example, you may be performing a deep tissue massage but the client says you went a little too deep and caused nerve damage resulting in muscle spasms and inflammation. With MMIP, you’d have a full $2 million to cover the costs of the claim, including any legal defense fees if the client decided to seek legal avenues to be compensated. The total of all your claims together in a single year is that $3 million individual annual aggregate figure.
General Liability Insurance Limits
Like professional liability insurance for massage therapists, general liability is another really important aspect of proper coverage. Indeed on our massage insurance comparison page you’ll see that all the top programs provide both general and professional liability protection. Think of these as your basic building blocks of a solid insurance plan.
General liability insurance, aka slip and fall, is going to protect you when a client or visitor to your massage suite is injured or has their property damaged. This is different from professional liability in that they don’t have to be under your care or supervision when the incident occurs. Calling it slip and fall insurance is apt because this is unfortunately a common scenario any business owner can face. A bit of spilled massage oil on the floor that causes someone to slip and fall can cause serious injury. In fact, according to the National Safety Council, the average cost of a slip and fall accident is upwards of $47,000!
Accidents around your place of business can take many forms which is why protection is so important from the moment you open your doors to the general public. Literally all it can take is one slip to find yourself facing a lawsuit. As with professional liability insurance, MMIP includes a full $2 million per occurrence and a $3 million individual annual aggregate for claims relating to general liability.
Product Liability Insurance Limits
Product liability insurance is important for massage professionals because an allergic reaction to a massage oil, cleaner, or other product that’s introduced in the session can be severe. When a client has a bad reaction it can go as far as anaphylaxis which the Mayo Clinic describes as a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction which can occur in a matter of minutes after exposure.
Protecting yourself as a massage therapist means having an insurance plan which understands all the risks in the industry and has a coverage plan designed to meet these head on. That’s why MMIP includes a $2 million individual annual aggregate for product liability. There’s no per occurrence limit here so you get all the way up to $2 million in total under this type of liability coverage.
Other Coverage Limits to Know
From general liability, professional liability, and product liability onto other protections included with a plan, you’ll see other coverage limits for each type of protection. You can think of these coverage limits as the maximum amount your insurance will pay out for a given type of covered risk.
With MMIP, we go for best-in-the-business coverage that truly provides 360 degrees of protection. That’s why we include additional protections to round out the “big 3” liability coverages we outlined above.
Additional coverage limits to know include:
- Rental Damage Coverage: many massage therapists rent space to provide their sessions to clients. Whether you rent a room from another massage suite or have your own space you rent from a commercial landlord, chances are good if you cause damage the owner is going to make you pay to have it repaired. Since accidents are common, MMIP includes a rental damage coverage limit of all the way up to $100,000 to help you cover the repair costs.
- Stolen Equipment Coverage: being the victim of a robbery-by-force is indeed a scary experience. You can be left shaken, scared, and suddenly without the tools of your trade in an instant. Rather than leave our members scrambling to pay for new equipment completely out-of-pocket, we include a stolen equipment coverage limit of up to $1,000 with a low $250 deductible to help replace the stolen items.
- Identity Protection Coverage: in this day and age, identity protection is a must but oddly isn’t something you see included even with other top programs in our massage insurance comparison. Knowing the risk and just how much massage therapists today rely on being connected to do their business, we include an identity protection plan that has a coverage limit of up to $25,000. This means you’ll have all the way up to $25,000 worth of identity restoration services from dedicated specialists to help put the pieces back together if your identity is compromised.
Additional limits all contribute towards a total coverage net that can really amp up the protection factor in your massage insurance plan. We’ve tailored this plan and these limits specifically to modern massage therapy to provide the best blend of affordability, utility, and coverage all in one.
While we work hard to ensure you're covered for everything you practice, there are some excluded methods that our policy does not cover.
What Are Aggregates in Massage Therapy Insurance?
Now, you’ve heard us mention aggregates and since we’re talking about MMIP plans it’s all having to do with individual annual aggregates. However, a lot of other plans out there run what’s called shared annual aggregates. We’ll break down what makes these two totally different ways of approaching how much coverage you actually have.
- Individual Aggregate: an individual annual aggregate is just that, coverage for an individual. When you purchase the plan, you sort of believe that the coverage limit is yours and yours alone. With individual aggregate plans, that’s absolutely the case.
- Shared Aggregate: shared aggregate plans put multiple members in one coverage limit “pool”. That means you have multiple parties all taking from the same pot. If others on the group have claims that eat up the coverage limit before you do, you could be left with little or no coverage remaining if you have a claim event pop up. The best course is to get your own insurance plan that includes its own individual aggregates so that you absolutely know you have coverage when you need it.
Policy Types That Can Make or Break Coverage Limits
You can have millions upon millions in coverage limits that mean absolutely nothing when the policy type prevents you from making a claim. A big disparity in massage insurance is occurrence form coverage versus claims made coverage.
At MMIP, we use the industry-preferred occurrence form type. Basically, this says you can file a claim even after your policy expires. Claims made is the exact opposite and says you can only file claims while the policy is active. This distinction can mean full coverage limits for your claim or none at all depending on the timing of the event. Rather than risk it, always make sure your policy uses occurrence form coverage.
How You Can Compound the Value of Insurance Coverage
Making your coverage limits provide the most value is all about how a massage therapy insurance plan is tailored for its members. With MMIP, we’re all about total career support with add-ons like:
- More Covered Modalities: we cover hundreds of massage services all at once. Go from Swedish, to hot stone, to deep tissue and back again and still enjoy the same great coverage under a single plan.
- Portability: move employers, locations, or across the country and your plan follows you every step of the way.
- Benefits Plan: get immediate access to a benefits plan worth thousands all by itself. Discounts, freebies, continuing education, and so much more await.
Coverage, Benefits, and Affordability Make the Best Massage Insurance
In the end, a great plan is going to have tailored coverage limits for each of the many types of risks there are in the industry. With MMIP, we do just that with our all-inclusive plan that also provides benefits you can use from day one. All this with upfront pricing, no hidden fees, and career-long support.
