Over the past three years we have seen an increasing trend of claims under professional liability insurance and general liability insurance resulting from quality control problems. To follow are some tips that will make your Professional Liability Insurance and General Liability Insurance underwriters to feel more comfortable with your risk:

• Implement the following elements for your quality control procedures as safeguards for your Professional Liability and General Liability claims.
Alpha Testing
Beta Testing
Formal Customer Acceptance Procedures
Prototype Development
Statistical Process Control
Vendor Verification Process
Total Quality Management
Written and Formalized Quality Control Program
Customer Signature on Each Phase of Project


• Comply with one or more of widely accepted industry standards.
UL/CSA – The American organization Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) are non-profit making independent organizations, which are responsible for the writing, testing, and certification of product safety standards.
ISO 9000 – A series of international standards that provides quality management guidance and identifies quality system elements.
CE MARK – A visible declaration by the manufacturer (or his representative, importer, etc.) that the equipment which is marked complies with all the requirements of all the applicable European Union (EU) directives
ANSI – The American National Standards Institute is a voluntary membership organization (run with private funding) that develops national consensus standards for a wide variety of devices and procedures.


• Perform pre-release/pre-dissemination testing to protect customers from malicious code and/or other security vulnerabilities in your services.



• Have a document/contract retention plan for at least seven years.

© 2006 Sadler & Company, Inc.