Insurance for 
beauty professionals

Professional liability insurance, sometimes called errors and omissions insurance (E&O insurance), is insurance coverage for claims against businesses that provide professional and personal services – for businesses like yours. When is it important to have professional liability insurance? Examples include:

• Lost wages: A hairdresser messes up a newscaster’s hair causing them to miss work. The client sues for lost wages and the incremental cost of having their hair done by someone else. Professional liability insurance could protect you if such a claim is made.
• Treatment gone wrong: An esthetician applies a chemical peel for a client. This client just returned from a vacation where she was in the sun all day. The client’s skin looked fine before the vacation but the extreme sun exposure on sensitive skin caused painful, ugly burns. The client decides to blame the esthetician and sues. Professional liability insurance could protect you if such a claim is made.

Learn more about professional liability insurance.

General liability insurance, sometimes called Commercial General Liability (CGL), could protect your business from another person or business’s claims of bodily injury, associated medical costs, and damage to property. Having this kind of coverage is beneficial in several instances:

• Personal injury: A make-up artist went to a bar after work with some friends. After a few drinks, she began talking loudly about a client. The comments were overheard by friends of the client, so word got back to the client, who sued the make-up artist for slander. General liability insurance may protect make-up artists against third-party claims of defamation and slander, property damage, and associated medical costs.
• Bodily injury: A nail technician completes a manicure for a client leaving on a cruise and gives her a tube of serum designed to lengthen the manicure’s life. When the client uses it, she develops a rash all over her fingers and has to postpone the cruise. She sues the manicurist. The subsequent claim and related medical expenses could be covered. General liability insurance could protect against third-party claims of property damage, bodily injury and associated medical costs.
• Damage to client property: A cosmetologist gets hired to provide makeup styling on a commercial video shoot. She sets her bags on a shelf, but realizes two seconds too late that the shelf can’t support the bag’s weight, causing the shelf to buckle, and the bag to fall directly on top of a box of expensive props. Your general liability policy could cover the subsequent claim, up to your policy's limits of liability.

Learn more about general liability insurance costs for your business.