Hold Harmless Agreements - The fundamentals

Hold Harmless Agreement Template

Hold harmless agreements and Indemnity agreements can be be extremely tricky in your small enterprise insurance program. Among the key things to remember in signing any agreement is the fact that in the United States you cannot sign away your rights. These hold harmless agreements and indemnity agreements will limit your ability for compensation and recourse. It will be in your best interests whenever you negotiate your contracts that you have mutually beneficial hold harmless agreements. In so doing, you will not arbitrarily provide coverage for your vendors and/or clients for their acts of negligence.
Haphazardly signing hold harmless and indemnity agreements without studying the ramifications can cost you a lot of money in the long run. By signing these kinds of agreements you can extend your coverage from the policy to other parties. Thus any claims which might be paid and any and all claims expenses which are incurred will be tallied upon your loss ratio on your own policy even though you have zero negligence whatsoever. So you could be paying for this agreement via claim payments on your own policy for many years to come. The insurance plan companies typically will surcharge your plan for a minimum of three years as a way to recoup their losses.

Indemnify and Hold Harmless

Hold Harmless Agreements are very common and are found within almost all contracts. Correctly ascertaining whether your insurance policy will respond to that which you have agreed to in writing and the hidden costs of claims that may affect your premiums are common items to consider in your overall enterprise risk management.