Over the past several years we have seen an increasing trend of claims resulting from quality control problems. Below are some tips that will help your Professional Liability Insurance and General Liability Insurance underwriters feel more comfortable with your  risk exposures:

1. Implement the following elements for your quality control procedures as safeguards for your Professional Liability and General Liability claims.

• Alpha and Beta Testing
• Formal Customer Acceptance Procedure
• Prototype Development
• Statistical Process Control
• Vendor Verification Process
• Total Quality Management
• Written and Formalized Quality Control Program
• Customer Signature on Each Phase of Project

2. Comply with one or more widely accepted industry standards.

• UL/CSA – The Underwriters Laboratories (UL) and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) are independent non-profit  organizations 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 marked equipment complies with all the requirements of all the applicable European Union (EU) directives.
• ANSI – The American National Standards Institute is a voluntary membership organization that develops national consensus standards for a wide variety of devices and procedures.

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

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