In e-commerce your role in the chain decides who receives the claim: do you sell yourself, do you act as an intermediary platform, or does someone else supply and deliver?
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In brief
An e-commerce business is rarely just a seller. It is also a platform for other suppliers, a service provider with subscriptions and integrations, and a processor of customer data. Each of those three roles brings a different kind of loss: property damage and injury with the product, pure financial loss with the service and with the data. A single policy does not cover all three.
Who does what only becomes clear at the moment something goes wrong. With dropshipping your supplier delivers direct to the customer, but the customer entered into the contract of sale with you. With fulfilment by a third party your stock sits in someone else's premises. In a marketplace model an affiliated business does the selling, while your name is on the order confirmation.
So record for each sales channel who the seller is, who the producer is and who processes the data. That review determines which cover you need and which you can leave &mdash. Not the size of your turnover.
What does liability insurance for e-commerce cover?
The structure of the cover in three parts, with an overview per situation below.
The essentials
Damage to property and personal injury
Damage to other people's property and injury to other people.
Injury to third parties
Damage to other people's property
Also during visits to clients' sites
For staff
Employers' liability
Accidents at work and occupational illnesses.
Article 7:658 of the Dutch Civil Code
Hired-in staff as well
Not in traffic
Optional
Extensions
What is excluded as standard.
Care, custody and control
Work after completion
Environmental damage
What is covered
Situation
AVB
Another policy
Injury to a visitor or customer
Yes
No
Damage to a client's property
Sometimes
No
An accident at work involving an employee
Yes
No
Injury to staff in traffic
No
Yes
Damage to property in your care
No
Sometimes
Pure financial loss caused by a professional error
No
Yes
This overview is general in nature and is not personal advice. What is actually covered, including exclusions, limits and the excess, is set out in the policy conditions and the insurance card (verzekeringskaart) of the insurer; you receive both before you take out cover. Taking out cover without advice? Then read what execution only means for you.
Where things go wrong in practice
Four points that make the difference between a policy that pays out and one that does not.
Record your role for each channel
If you sell through your own shop, through someone else's marketplace, and others sell through you, a different liability runs on each channel. Draw up an overview showing, per channel, the selling party, the supplying party and the party that holds the customer data. Without it you buy cover on instinct, and it is precisely the channel with the highest volume that stays uninsured.
With dropshipping the customer stays with you
The customer orders from you, pays you and comes to you. The fact that the box comes straight from your supplier makes no difference. If that supplier is based outside the European Union, you are also the party that placed the product on the European market. Arrange indemnities in the purchase contract and check whether the supplier has liability cover of its own.
Data are the largest exposure here
An online shop holds addresses, order histories and payment details for everyone who has ever ordered. A data breach or a ransomware incident therefore affects far more people than a product defect. Customer claims for unlawful processing, the cost of investigation and of informing those affected fall under a cyber policy, not under your public and employers' liability insurance. Report a breach to the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (the Dutch data protection authority) within 72 hours.
Three things no liability policy resolves
Administrative fines with a punitive character are not insurable. Lost turnover because your own web shop is down for days is business interruption rather than liability. That belongs with cyber or business interruption cover. A dispute with a supplier over non-performance is contractual and not an insured claim. Penalties under your own terms and conditions, such as delivery guarantees, also remain for your own account.
Care, custody and control is excluded as standard
Damage to property that you have in your care: borrowed, hired, being worked on or held in safekeeping: is not covered by the standard cover. For professions where this is the core of the work, a separate care, custody and control module with its own limit is essential.
Your AVB excludes damage caused with or by motor vehicles. It is precisely there that the Hoge Raad (the Dutch Supreme Court) recognised a separate liability based on the duty to act as a good employer: an employer must arrange proper insurance for employees who take part in traffic for work. A WEGAS insurance policy fills that gap.
Customers rate our service on four aspects: personal service, service delivery, availability and the outcome. The reviews are collected and published by NH1816 and come from customers who have actually taken out a policy with Finass Advies B.V. or reported a claim.
We are a platform, not the seller. Do we still run a risk?
Yes, but on other grounds. You are not the producer of what an affiliated business sells, but you can be held to account for what you do yourself: displaying incorrect information, admitting a seller you knew was offering unsafe items, or failing to secure the data that passes through your environment properly. Those risks sit with professional indemnity and cyber cover.
Does our AVB cover a data breach?
No. Public and employers' liability insurance pays for injury and damaged property. In a data breach there is no physical damage: the costs lie in forensic investigation, restoration, informing those affected, legal assistance and claims for unlawful processing. That package belongs with a cyber policy, which you have to take out separately.
Our fulfilment partner damages our stock. Is that covered?
That is not a liability matter on your side but a claim by you against them. You insure your own stock held by a third party under a goods or stock policy. Conversely, if your staff cause damage to someone else's property at that partner's site, you may run into the care, custody and control exclusion. So set the liability out explicitly in the logistics contract.
We advise on how products are used. Does that matter?
Yes. If you advise on suitability, dosage, dimensions or installation and it turns out badly, the customer suffers a financial loss without anything necessarily being damaged. That is pure financial loss and falls outside public and employers' liability insurance. For that you need professional indemnity insurance, tailored to the nature of your advice.
Finass Verzekert is a trading name of Finass Advies B.V. We advise on and arrange non-life insurance on the basis of an objective analysis of several insurers, and receive commission for this from the insurer, which is included in the premium. You pay no separate advice fee. Before you take out cover, we establish your wishes and needs.
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