SAAS Liability insurance

partoc

Hi - we are a Dublin based software company (Ltd). Our software is cloudbased more often referred to as Software as a service (SAAS) We will be supplying software products to client who will be using our software to launch their marketing campaigns. Obviously if they send out their campaign to 10,000 customers and something goes wrong with our software we are in trouble so we need to get insurance.

We have been told that we should apply for is Business continuity insurance however I thought it would be limited liability insurance? As you can tell I have not done this before so look forward to getting your expert opinion on this - I have contacted a few insurance companies however I wanted to see if other SAAS devlopers have used insurance for their product,

cheers partoc

Peterdalkey

Product Liability insurance generally only covers actual physical injury to a third party, such as becoming ill after using it, and the like. What you seem to be looking for is performance based fitness for purpose type indemnity cover, I very much doubt if is affordable, though you may be able to get a bond that would pay out a certain amount in the event of a major product function disaster but it would be very expensive, I would guess.
Some of your contacts in EI should be able to advise as to what is the norm within your sector, or at least find out from existing players.

amen

Obviously if they send out their campaign to 10,000 customers and something goes wrong with our software we are in trouble so we need to get insurance.

So if they mistype a word in the marketing campaign and you send it correctly is that a problem with your software (no spell checker) or a user issue?

You might want to get some legal advice and You really need to look at your Terms of Use, Contract etc

A lot of sites have legal disclaimers which makes it harder (though not impossible) to be sued.

Nody

You'd also need to look at what your contract with your cloud supplier says; what's the up time they promise, what's the SLA to fix tier 1 problem (all down), tier 2 (major impact but some stuff available) etc.

partoc

Hi all,

I got the following from an insurance company

"You would need professional indemnity insurance as a minimum cover to deal with claims for any alleged or actual professional negligence."

However now I need to examine other saas contracts and see how their TC's look.

Thanks for your input everyone,

partoc