Insurance for Fitness Professionals

Professional liability insurance, sometimes called errors and omissions insurance (E&O insurance), is insurance coverage for claims against businesses that provide professional and personal services – ideal for fitness businesses like yours.

When is it important to have professional liability insurance as a fitness professional? Examples relevant to your industry include:

• Negligence: While you are leading a yoga class, someone slips and falls, requiring stitches to their face. They allege that you were negligent in supervising the class and demand that you pay their hospital bills. A professional liability insurance policy can negotiate a settlement for this claim, or defend and indemnify you if it goes to suit, up to the policy’s limits of liability.
• Personal Injury: A personal trainer instructs an older client to perform a specific exercise that requires substantial physical exertion. After completing the exercise circuit, the client is overcome with dizziness, experiences chest pain, and is rushed to the hospital. Even though the client had an existing heart condition, he claims that the trainer’s circuit caused his heart attack, as well as mental anguish, and sues for damages. Professional liability insurance could protect you against claims of negligence and will appoint an attorney to defend you if needed, even if you haven’t made a mistake.

Fitness professional insurance may help protect you from claims of negligence that allege you didn’t train or instruct a client properly. This specialized insurance may also protect you from a client’s claims of not feeling well after a training session. With each client that trains with you, it’s important to have the right protections in place.

Learn more about professional liability insurance.

General liability insurance, also known as commercial general liability (CGL), could protect your business from another person or business’s claims of bodily injury, associated medical costs, personal injury, and damage to property.

Having this kind of coverage is beneficial in the fitness industry. Consider the following real-world examples:

• Damage to client property: While working with a personal trainer, a client puts her gym bag next to a weight rack. The rack is not secured properly and falls over, breaking her cell phone and tablet. The client files a legal claim for reimbursement. General liability insurance may protect against claims for your client’s property damage.
• Personal injury: While at lunch, a pilates instructor is talking to a friend about a client in a false and unflattering way. The client learns of this conversation and sues for slander. We may cover the subsequent claim up to the limit of liability and pay for an attorney if necessary.
• Bodily injury: While walking to a personal training session, a client trips over an extension cord. She falls and injures herself. While it was an accident, she blames the personal trainer for not keeping the area clear and files a lawsuit. General liability insurance may protect against third-party claims of property damage, bodily injury, and associated medical costs.

Medical costs can run extremely high even for simple accidents and seemingly minor injuries. As a fitness professional or gym owner, arm yourself with insurance from Hiscox. Our team of experts is prepared to handle claims like these.

Learn more about general liability insurance.

As a fitness professional, you work directly with clients, so there’s always a risk of bodily injury or property damage. Plus, you may have expensive equipment you use to do your job. To protect against these risks, fitness professionals should consider a business owner’s policy (BOP) which provides coverage for third-party claims of bodily injury, including medical costs, and property damage. It also includes coverage for your own business property.

Here's an example. A fitness professional was working with a client at their gym, using a new piece of exercise equipment. The apparatus slipped and fell during the workout, injuring the client and damaging the equipment. The fitness professional’s BOP covered the client’s injuries as well as the cost to replace the equipment.

Fitness professionals may store sensitive information about their clients, including payment information, or medical and personal health data. If this data is contained on a laptop that is lost or stolen, you may be liable for the cost to inform your customers and even provide credit monitoring, if required, even if the information isn’t compromised. If your computer is breached, there may be costs associated with recovering the data. These costs can all be covered by a cyber security insurance policy, including expert assistance in how to handle a breach, including notification requirements.

Here's an example. A fitness professional who provides one-on-one training was held to a high level of confidentiality by their well-known clients. When the trainer became the victim of a phishing email, they were concerned that their clients’ personal information would be released by the hackers. Fortunately, the fitness professional’s cyber security insurance policy included expert breach response services that contained the damage and preserved the trainer’s reputation.