Getting it back off the shelves costs more than the stock is worth.
Pays the cost of withdrawing a product — notification, retrieval, disposal, replacement and the income lost while the line is stopped — none of which product liability covers.
Tell us the situation.
One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.
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Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.
Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.
What product recall actually covers.
Recall expenses
Notifying customers, shipping the product back, storing and destroying it, and replacing it.
Without it — A recall is funded out of working capital at the moment revenue has stopped.
Lost gross profit
Income lost while the product is off sale and the line is down.
Without it — The interruption usually costs more than the physical exercise.
Rehabilitation and crisis response
The public relations and marketing spend needed to recover the brand afterwards.
Without it — The recall ends and the sales do not come back.
Third-party recall
Where your component triggers a recall of somebody else’s finished product.
Without it — A component maker can be liable for a recall many times the value of what they supplied.
Where product recall shows up.
- Manufacturing
Excluded from liability forms almost universally, and routinely absent as a result.
- Food Manufacturing
The likeliest large loss in food, and excluded from the liability policy.
- Medical Devices
Device field actions are common and the liability policy does not fund them.
- Pharmaceutical
A recall in this sector is a regulatory process with a fixed clock and real cost.
- Supplements & Nutraceuticals
Excluded from liability, and the likeliest event in the category.
- Bakeries
Excluded from liability coverage, and needed the moment you supply wholesale.
- Cannabis
Recall is excluded from liability and states order them regularly.
- Hemp & CBD
Excluded from liability, and testing failures are the common trigger.
What clients with product recall ask us.
Is a recall covered by our product liability policy?
No, and this is the single most common misunderstanding in manufacturing insurance. Liability responds to harm the product has caused. A recall is the opposite exercise, acting before harm, or after a defect is found — and the costs are almost universally excluded from a liability form. A manufacturer can carry substantial product liability and have nothing at all for the recall.
Does it cover a recall we choose to do voluntarily?
It depends on the trigger and it is worth checking word by word. Some forms respond only to a government-mandated recall, others include a voluntary withdrawal where there is a reasonable expectation of harm, and some require a defined defect rather than a precautionary decision. A voluntary recall done for the right reasons and refused for a wording reason is the worst version of this.
We make a component, not the finished product. Are we exposed?
Often more than the assembler is, proportionally. If your part triggers the recall of a finished product, the claim is the cost of recalling everything it was fitted to: vehicles, appliances, machines — which can be many multiples of what your component sold for. Third-party recall coverage is the piece that answers that, and component makers are the ones most likely to lack it.
Commercial insurance is 96% of what we do — it is not a department here, it is the whole business. Not ready to talk? The guides answer the questions this page raises in more depth. Already insured with us and need a certificate or a policy change? Ask the service team rather than starting a quote — it is faster and it goes to the people whose job it is. We also write home and auto, which is usually cheaper alongside the business policy than apart from it.
Handed a lease, a vendor packet or a client contract with insurance requirements? Paste it into the COI Requirements Decoder to see what each one means for your business, or read what the requirements mean.