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General liability covers physical harm your operations cause to other people and their property: a visitor injured on your premises, property damaged by your work, harm caused by your product. Professional liability, also called errors and omissions, covers financial harm caused by your advice, design, or services: the spreadsheet error, the flawed design, the missed deadline that cost a client money. Most service businesses need both, because each form explicitly excludes what the other covers.
The dividing line is the nature of the injury. GL responds to bodily injury and tangible property damage, which is why every landlord and customer contract demands it. E&O responds to pure economic loss flowing from professional work: no one was hurt and nothing was broken, but the client lost money relying on what you delivered. A consultant whose recommendation cost a client $2M has no GL claim, because nothing physical happened, and no coverage at all without professional liability.
Real claims love the seam. A software defect that corrupts a customer's data: professional failure, or property damage. An engineering error that contributes to a structural collapse: the injury is physical, but the cause was professional. Well-built programs handle the seam deliberately, with forms whose definitions meet cleanly, ideally with one carrier handling both or with wording reviewed so neither carrier can point at the other. Boundary disputes between two of your own carriers are a fight you fund while they argue.
Any business that gives advice, designs, calculates, codes, or certifies needs professional liability, and any business with premises, products, or contracts needs GL, which is to say nearly everyone needs both. Technology companies typically buy them fused, tech E&O combined with cyber, so the seam between software failure and data incident sits inside one form. Licensed professions often carry statutory or board-driven E&O requirements on top of whatever contracts demand.
No. GL forms exclude professional services almost universally. Financial harm from advice or deliverables is professional liability territory, which is exactly why the professional-services exclusion on a GL form surprises so many consultants at claim time.
Yes, the terms are interchangeable. Some professions use specific names, malpractice in medicine, E&O in technology and consulting, but the mechanics, claims-made form, retroactive date, conduct-based coverage, are the same.
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