The right policy depends on one question nobody asked you: who, legally, is the therapist?

The individual policy, kept

A true solo practitioner — no entity, no staff, no vendor contracts — is well served by an individual professional liability policy from a program like CPH, and usually for a few hundred dollars a year. That price comes from a very large pool of low-severity risks, and no broker rebuilding your insurance beats it.

Without it — Moving a true solo to a business policy buys coverage for an entity that does not exist. When the cheap policy is right we say so and leave it alone.

The LLC gap

An individual policy insures the named practitioner. If you formed an LLC or PLLC — to bill insurance panels, sign a lease, or take contracts — that company is a separate legal person, and it is not the insured on your individual policy. A claim that names the company is not automatically answered by a policy that names you.

Without it — The gap stays invisible until a lawsuit, a lease dispute or a contract review finds it. We meet practitioners with an LLC and an individual policy weekly; almost none were ever asked the question when they bought the policy.

The $1M abuse and molestation requirement

School districts, regional centers and health systems increasingly require a $1,000,000 sexual abuse and molestation liability limit from anyone working with students or vulnerable clients. Association-program policies typically carry sexual misconduct coverage as defense costs only, which does not satisfy an indemnity requirement — and there is usually no endorsement that fixes it.

Without it — The contract stalls on a certificate line. The honest fix is a package rebuilt around the requirement — usually cheaper than the $3,000-to-$5,000 stand-alone SAM policy that is the only other road — and knowing those numbers up front beats discovering them during a countdown to a start date.

Graduating to a practice policy

The moment there are employees or contractors, the buying unit is the practice: general liability for the premises, professional liability covering the entity and everyone under it, abuse and molestation at the limits funders ask for, and hired and non-owned auto if anyone drives between sites.

Without it — A stack of individual policies covers each person and leaves the practice itself bare — and the stack costs more than one practice policy sooner than most owners expect.

I am a solo therapist with no LLC. Should I change anything?

Probably not, and we would rather tell you that than quote you. An individual policy from a large association program is priced off an enormous pool and usually includes licensing-board defense coverage that matters more to a solo than any limit increase. The time to call us is when something structural changes: you form an entity, you hire, or a contract arrives asking for limits or coverages your policy cannot show.

I have an LLC and an individual policy. How bad is it?

It depends on what the LLC does, which is exactly why the answer should come from your declarations page and not from a rule of thumb. If the LLC is a pass-through that exists only on paper, the exposure is real but narrow. If it bills, leases, contracts or employs, the company carries liabilities the individual policy never contemplated. Send us the dec page and the one-sentence story of why you formed the LLC, and we will tell you plainly whether you have a paperwork mismatch or a coverage gap — they are different problems with different price tags.

A school district wants $1M sexual abuse and molestation coverage. My carrier says no. Now what?

This is the most common reason practitioners land on this page, and the expectations matter: a stand-alone SAM policy typically runs $3,000 to $5,000 a year in the surplus lines market. That is why we usually recommend writing the entire program instead — a package with general liability, professional liability and the SAM limit together is usually cheaper than the stand-alone policy by itself, especially once an entity is involved. If keeping your current policy and adding monoline SAM beside it genuinely wins, we place that — we quote both and show both numbers. What does not exist, for most association programs, is a cheap endorsement that adds the limit.

The stand-alone SAM placement, honestly priced

Why does full sexual abuse and molestation coverage barely exist for individuals?

Because of how liability works for a solo. An organization buys abuse coverage largely for its vicarious exposure — negligent hiring, supervision and retention of the people it oversees. A solo practitioner has no one to supervise, so a policy insuring only them is insuring the person the allegation would be against, and intentional-act exclusions and state public policy sharply limit what such a policy could ever pay beyond defense. That is why programs write defense-only sublimits, and why the market for a true $1M individual limit is small, surplus-lines and priced accordingly. It exists — we place it — but it is a considered placement, not a checkbox.

What do you need to sort this out?

Three things, all of which you can send in one email: your current declarations page, whether an entity exists and what it actually does, and any contract or vendor requirement that started the question. From those we can tell you which of three people you are — the solo whose policy is fine, the LLC owner with a mismatch to fix, or the practice that has outgrown practitioner policies entirely — and what each path costs before you commit to anything.