What Every Solo Esthetician Should Know About Insurance

In this sue-happy age, it’s expensive to defend yourself even when you’ve done nothing wrong. Smart independent esties realize that being named in a lawsuit is not worth risking their career. As a solo esthetician, you probably know that you will need insurance, but did you know there are several types of insurance, and you may need different policies for different risks?

What is Liability Insurance?

First, what exactly is liability insurance? What does it do? Why is it important? It’s an insurance policy that protects you when you are being sued and/or being held legally liable for claims of negligence resulting from damage or injury to a person or property.

Simply put, you’ve been negligent in some way at work, and it resulted in injury to a client or damaged their property in some way. Here’s information on insurance types.

1. What is Professional Liability?

Professional Liability is when a client has been injured during the service you performed.

For instance, glass falling out of a mag lamp and cutting the orbital bone on a client or a steamer spitting scalding water and burning a client—accidents happen.

2. What is Product Liability?

Product Liability is when a client has suffered an allergic reaction caused from a product used on them or sold to them for at-home use.

An example of this is a rash developing from a client overusing their glycolic acid cleanser.

3. What is General Liability?

General Liability is when a client has been injured during a slip and fall, or due to faulty equipment. This also covers damage to a client’s property from faulty equipment.

An example of this is when one of our members traveled to a client’s house to perform a facial. After the facial was complete, the member went to pack up her supplies and noticed the products had left permanent rings on an antique wood table, ruining the table. Guess how much the table cost? $10,000! Thankfully, the member had insurance, which covered the price of this costly mistake.

Business Personal Property Insurance

Business Personal Property (BPP) Insurance is contents coverage for your business. This valuable insurance meets the solo esthetician’s needs in the event of equipment loss due to a fire, flood, or theft.

Shared Vs. Individual Coverage

To be sure your insurance coverage is your own and is not shared with other policyholders, make sure the aggregate coverage on your policy is per individual, per year—not a shared master aggregate.  

Why does this matter? If you purchase a policy with a shared master aggregate, it means you are sharing the insurance policy limits with fellow policyholders. 

Let’s say your insurance provider has a particularly high number of claims in one year from their other customers and pays out several sizeable settlements to those people. If you file a claim of your own later in the year, it’s possible there may be no money left to defend or settle your claim. With an individual aggregate policy, the policy limits are available to you (and you only) for the entire policy year.

Occurrence Form Vs. Claims-Made

Also ask if the policy is a claims-made policy or an occurrence form policy.

Claims-made coverage requires claims be reported while your policy is in effect. If your policy has expired and someone makes a claim against you (even though you had insurance at the time of the incident), you will have no insurance coverage because your policy has lapsed. The insurance company also has the right to refuse to renew your policy. This could make it difficult to protect yourself.

Occurrence form means coverage continues for incidents that occur while you were insured, even if a claim is filed at a later date when your policy has lapsed. With occurrence form coverage, should you have a claim filed 23 months later, even though you no longer have a current policy, your policy will provide liability coverage for a covered claim.  

Esthetician Insurance with ASCP

Smart estheticians realize that being named in a lawsuit is not worth risking your career. In this sue-happy age, it’s expensive to defend yourself even when you’ve done nothing wrong. Why chance it when excellent protection is so affordable?

Associated Skin Care Professionals (ASCP) offers protection with the industry’s best value in liability coverage for skin care professionals. For only $259 per year, you receive:

• $2 million per occurrence
• $6 million total per policy year (for YOU, not shared with other professionals)
• Covers professional, general, and product liability
• Covers you wherever you work, no matter how many settings

Not an ASCP Member? Join Today!