Liability: what you are responsible for, and what is covered

The rule, in one sentence

Liability in Finland is governed by the Tort Liability Act (vahingonkorvauslaki, 412/1974). Cause damage to another person or their property through negligence, and you are liable to compensate it.

Everything else on this page is about which of your risks that rule reaches, and what covers them.

Two kinds of liability, and they are not covered the same way

Professional liability. A mistake in the work itself causes financial loss to your client: advice that turns out wrong, a database deleted, a design that misses a legal requirement. The damage is money, not property.

General liability. You cause physical damage or injury to a third party while working: a light stand falls, equipment scratches a floor, a visitor trips over a cable.

These are distinct products in the insurance market, and it is worth checking which one you actually hold. Toiminnan vastuuvakuutus: the cover included in the upper packages, is general liability. Professional indemnity for pure financial loss is a separate policy, and in some fields it is the one that matters.

If your work can cause a client expensive consequences without anything being physically damaged, read your terms rather than assuming.

Where you work changes what you are responsible for

A client’s premises. Their rules, their safety instructions, and often their contractual requirements, including the insurance you must hold before you are let in.

Rented and pop-up spaces. Rental agreements for pop-up premises in Helsinki and elsewhere almost always require proof of general liability insurance before you can open. This is the most common way a freelancer discovers they need it, which is late.

Public spaces. Filming, photographing or working in a public place brings in permits as well as liability, and the two are separate questions.

Your own home. Convenient, and it does not remove your liability to a client for work done there.

What is covered through the service

Two different things carry the word “accident”, and the live pages ran them together. They are not the same.

Accident cover (tapaturmavakuutus) and liability cover (vastuuvakuutus) are two separate LähiTapiola policies and they come with different packages. Accident cover is included in the Smart and Responsible packages, liability cover in Responsible only, and Basic has neither, which is the line you see on the price list and the reason Basic is the cheapest.

There is no separate automatic layer beneath it. Invoicing on Basic means no accident cover through this service at all, which is worth weighing against the one per cent the cheaper package saves.

Read that way, “group accident insurance is automatically included in our service” and “accident insurance, not included in the price” are both true statements about different policies. The live pages never say which is which.

The cover and its exclusions are in the insurance terms; what the products are, on insurance service, accident insurance and liability insurance.

Reducing the risk rather than insuring it

Insurance pays after the event. These reduce the chance of the event.

Write down the scope. A large share of professional liability disputes are disagreements about what was agreed, not about whether the work was done well.

Agree the limits of your responsibility in the contract, especially for consequential loss. This is normal commercial practice and clients expect to see it.

Keep your own equipment safe: cables, stands, tools. Most general liability claims are trip hazards, not catastrophes.

Document what you delivered and when. The same records that get an invoice paid also settle a claim about the work.

Check the insurance requirement before you sign, not before you start. It is a condition of the contract, and discovering it the week of the job means either paying for cover in a hurry or losing the work.

What we include and in which plan is on insurance for light entrepreneurs.

Sources

• Tort Liability Act 412/1974 (finlex.fi)