Your Coverage Should Match Your Reality

Commercial General Liability (CGL)

Discovery: We sit down and understand your operations, your contracts, and your exposures. Who are your clients? What do you do on their premises? What could go wrong? For contractors and trades, this means understanding every job site scenario. For food service operators, it means mapping liquor liability, spoilage, and event exposures. The discovery shapes every decision that follows.

Form Review: We determine the right trigger — occurrence vs. claims-made — and dissect the exclusion schedule for your specific industry. A restaurant's CGL form looks nothing like a contractor's. An HVAC installer needs completed operations coverage that a retail store doesn't. We read the exclusions line by line, because that's where the surprises hide — and where Patel & Sons Mechanical almost lost $180,000.

Gap Analysis: Every placement runs against our 47-point checklist, developed from 37 years of claims data. This is where we find the exclusions nobody told you about — the pollution liability carve-out on a plumber's policy, the professional services exclusion on a tech company's CGL, the assault-and-battery limitation on a hospitality venue's form. If there's a gap, this step catches it.

Endorsement Negotiation: Completed operations, additional insured, waiver of subrogation, blanket contractual liability — we negotiate the endorsements your contracts require and your risk profile demands. Many commercial leases and subcontracts specify exact endorsement language. We match it, or we explain why an alternative provides equivalent protection.

Placement: Competitive quotes across carriers including Aviva Canada, Intact Insurance, Definity, Wawanesa, Northbridge, Chubb, and specialty markets. Standard placements start at $2M per-occurrence / $5M aggregate for most SMBs, but limits are tailored to contract requirements. We present a minimum of three carrier options with side-by-side comparisons so you can see exactly what each offers.

Deliverables: written coverage analysis, side-by-side policy comparison, ongoing certificates of insurance management (avg. turnaround: 1 hour 47 minutes)

Professional Liability / Errors & Omissions (E&O)

Exposure Assessment: What advice or services do you sell? Who relies on your professional judgment? A management consultant's liability profile is fundamentally different from a software developer's or an architect's. The answers shape the entire placement — including whether you need standard E&O, technology E&O, or a specialized form for your profession. Our professional services and technology clients range from digital agencies to engineering firms, and each requires a distinct approach.

Form Matching: A management consultant's E&O policy reads very differently from a software developer's technology E&O. Technology E&O typically includes coverage for software failures, data loss caused by your product, and intellectual property infringement — none of which appear on a standard professional liability form. We match the form to your specific professional exposure — not a generic template that leaves critical activities uncovered.

Retroactive Date Review: We handle retroactive date management carefully. This is where most broker transitions create accidental coverage gaps. If your prior acts date shifts forward during a policy switch, you lose protection for everything before that date. That means a client complaint about work you performed two years ago could become an uninsured claim overnight. We verify and protect the retroactive date during every renewal and every carrier change.

Carrier Selection: When standard markets can't accommodate the risk, we access surplus lines (E&S) placement through specialty carriers. Think of it this way: a niche risk needs a niche insurer. James Olawale, our commercial account executive with 8 years at Aon's SME division, specializes in placing these harder-to-write professional liability risks through carriers who actually understand the exposure.

Binding: Final policy review, confirmation of retroactive dates, and delivery of your bound coverage documentation. We verify that every term discussed during placement is reflected in the issued policy — because carrier documentation errors happen more often than you'd expect.

We placed Bloom Digital's tech E&O through Chubb and saved them from a $95,000 uninsured claim. Defense counsel was appointed within 11 days.

Commercial Property Insurance

Coverage Audit: What do you own, lease, or improve? Buildings, contents, equipment, tenant improvements, signage, specialized fixtures — every asset gets catalogued with its current replacement cost. For healthcare and medical clinics, this includes diagnostic equipment that can cost $40,000–$200,000 per unit. For manufacturers, it includes production machinery, raw materials, and finished inventory.

Valuation Update: Insured values should reflect what it would cost to replace your equipment today — not the purchase price or the number from three years ago. Construction costs have increased 25–40% in the GTA since 2020. Equipment that cost $50,000 five years ago might cost $72,000 to replace today. We update these annually as part of every commercial client's renewal review.

Coinsurance Review: If you're insured at 70% of actual value and the policy requires 80%, you'll face a coinsurance penalty at claim time. That penalty is proportional — meaning even a small claim gets reduced. On a $100,000 loss with an 80% coinsurance requirement and only 70% of value insured, you'd receive roughly $87,500 instead of $100,000. We verify you're insured to value before it matters.

Agreed-Value Endorsement: This pre-agrees on the insured value with the carrier, eliminating depreciation disputes entirely. When a pipe bursts and destroys $67,000 in equipment, there's no argument about what it was worth. (That's exactly what happened at Steeles Crossing Medical Centre — Priya had placed the agreed-value endorsement just six months earlier, and the claim was fully covered. The clinic had been uninsured for that risk for four years prior.)

Placement: We place commercial property across multiple carriers, comparing not just premiums but deductible structures, covered perils, and claims-handling reputations. For property management clients with multiple buildings, we can consolidate onto blanket policies — as we did for Northview Properties, saving $29,000 annually across 12 buildings.

Deliverables: detailed risk assessment report, renewal proposal with carrier comparison, annual valuation review

Business Interruption & Loss of Income

Revenue Analysis: We review your trailing 12-month financials to establish a baseline. This isn't guesswork — it's documented income that becomes the foundation for your coverage limit. We look at gross revenue, net income, seasonal fluctuations, and growth trends. A business that's grown 30% year-over-year needs a limit that reflects next year's revenue, not last year's.

Indemnity Period Calculation: How long would a real shutdown last? A retail store might reopen in six weeks. A manufacturer waiting on custom equipment could be down for nine months. A restaurant requiring health department re-inspection and contractor remediation might need four to five months. We calculate the realistic timeline based on your specific operation, your supply chain dependencies, and local contractor availability — not an optimistic estimate.

Fixed Cost Mapping: Rent, payroll, loan payments, insurance premiums, equipment leases, utility minimums, accounting fees — these fixed costs don't stop just because your business did. We ensure your limit accounts for every obligation that continues during closure. Missing even one significant fixed cost can leave you tens of thousands of dollars short when you need the coverage most.

Limit Setting & Annual Review: Limits are set to cover the full exposure, and we re-evaluate annually. Here's why that matters: if a fire shuts you down for four months but your indemnity period only covers two, you're paying rent and payroll out of pocket for the difference. This is one of the most commonly under-insured coverages in the SMB market — and it's the one that can quietly bankrupt an otherwise healthy business. Marcus Chen, our commercial lines manager, reviews every business interruption limit against updated financials during each renewal cycle.

Deliverable: business interruption coverage analysis with documented revenue baseline, fixed cost schedule, and indemnity period recommendation

Cyber Liability Insurance

Data Inventory: What personal data do you collect and store? Customer emails, credit card numbers, employee SINs, patient health records — each type carries a different regulatory and liability profile. A medical clinic storing patient health information under PHIPA has different obligations than an e-commerce manufacturer processing credit card transactions under PCI-DSS. We map your data landscape before sizing the policy.

Exposure Sizing: A breach affecting just 5,000 records can easily generate $200,000+ in response costs — forensic investigation ($15,000–$50,000), breach notification mailings ($3–$5 per record), credit monitoring services ($10–$30 per affected individual per year), legal counsel, regulatory defense, and potential fines. We size the policy based on your actual data footprint, not a generic estimate.

First-Party/Third-Party Structuring: First-party coverage handles your costs — forensic investigation, breach notification, credit monitoring, public relations expenses, and business interruption from a cyber event. Third-party coverage handles lawsuits and regulatory fines from affected parties — customers, employees, or regulators who come after you for exposing their data. You probably need both. We structure the split based on whether your primary exposure is operational disruption (ransomware shutting down your systems) or data liability (personal information being stolen).

Policy Placement & Incident Response: We place the policy and ensure you have a documented incident response plan — who to call, what to preserve, how to contain the breach. A standalone cyber policy for a small business typically runs $1,200–$3,500/year. That's probably the most underpriced coverage available relative to the exposure, especially given that standard CGL policies now explicitly exclude cyber events. The average cost of a data breach for a Canadian small business was $44,000 in 2024 according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. Learn more about cyber risk in our resource guides.

Deliverables: cyber risk assessment, policy placement with first-party/third-party analysis, incident response plan template