Product Liability Insurance in Cyprus

What is product liability insurance in Cyprus, and who needs it?

Product liability insurance pays third-party claims when a product you made, imported, supplied, installed or rebranded injures someone or damages their property. It covers the compensation and the legal defence costs. Cyprus manufacturers, importers, wholesalers, retailers, parts suppliers and installers all sit inside the same liability chain.

Product liability starts where your control over the product ends, so you do not have to manufacture anything to be exposed. Reselling, importing or installing is enough on its own.

Six groups of Cyprus businesses buy this cover:

If you fit or modify what you sell, contractors all risk insurance covers the works themselves and sits alongside this policy.

Fire insurance for Cyprus businesses covers your own building and stock. This policy covers what your product does to other people.

How much does product liability insurance cost in Cyprus?

Cover starts at about €300 a year for a €100,000 limit. A €1,000,000 limit typically runs €650 to €1,300 a year, depending on your turnover and your headcount. Those figures are our own quotes across the Cyprus insurers we place, for the profile shown below.

Cover limit	Annual premium
€10,000	€100
€25,000	€150
€50,000	€240
€100,000Most requested	€300
€250,000	€430
€500,000	€450
€1,000,000	€650

Entry-level profile: turnover under €100,000 with one to three staff. Turnover and headcount move every row.

Figures are indicative for the profile shown and subject to underwriting.

So when a client asks me how much is product liability insurance, the answer has two halves. There is the band above, and there is the reason it is a band. In Cyprus, products liability is written as a section of a Public and Products Liability policy and rated off your annual turnover, so the exact premium comes from a quote rather than a price list.

Four things move the number:

Your buyer's contract usually sets the limit, and locally those sit commonly between €100,000 and €2,000,000. Note how flat the middle of the ladder is: €250,000 costs €430 and €500,000 costs €450, so taking the higher limit is €20 a year.

Cyprus policy wordings and older brokers often call this civil liability cover, so you may see the same section quoted under that name. Above €2,000,000 of turnover the ladder stops being useful and we quote the risk individually.

Is product liability insurance mandatory in Cyprus?

No. Product liability insurance is not required by Cyprus law. The liability itself is statutory: Law 105(I)/1995 makes you answerable for a defective product whether or not you insure it. Employers' liability insurance is a business cover Cyprus law does compel.

That gap catches people out. Cyprus law compels employers' liability insurance at a minimum of €160,000 per employee under Law 174(I)/1989, so owners assume the other liability covers follow the same rule. Product liability does not. No Cyprus statute tells you to buy it.

The compulsion here is commercial instead of legal, and it bites sooner. Supermarket and distributor supply agreements, public tenders and trade-fair conditions routinely ask for a product-liability certificate with a stated limit.

Our business insurance checklist runs through the rest of what a Cyprus company gets asked to hold.

Product liability vs public liability, employers' liability and professional indemnity

Five liability lines get mixed up in Cyprus, and buying the wrong one is expensive. Sort them by who brings the claim.

One confusion deserves its own paragraph, because it costs people money. Insuring your own building, machinery and stock is property insurance. Product liability covers the damage your product does to someone else's property. If a fitting you supplied floods a client's apartment, that is this policy. If a fire takes out your own warehouse, it is not.

Cyprus insurers usually sell the two liability lines together as one Public and Products Liability section. That is why our public liability insurance page carries the public-liability prices and this page carries the product-liability figures. Greek wordings call the whole family αστική ευθύνη, civil liability, so both names turn up on the same quote.

If a contract asks for more than €1,000,000, an excess layer sits on top of the primary policy. The public liability page sets out how much cover you need and how those layers price.

Claims from your own staff belong on employers' liability insurance, which is compulsory in Cyprus.

Claims about your advice, design or drawings belong on professional indemnity insurance.

What Cyprus law makes you liable for a defective product?

The Defective Products (Civil Liability) Law 105(I)/1995, as amended, makes producers, importers and suppliers liable for defective products. It transposes Directive 85/374/EEC. Liability is strict: the claimant proves the defect, the damage and the link between them, not that you were careless. Where the producer cannot be identified, the supplier answers the claim.

That is what strict liability means at the desk. "We followed our usual process" is not an answer to the claim, whatever else it may be worth.

The 1995 Law asks one question about the product. Did it provide the safety a consumer is reasonably entitled to expect? That gets judged on how the product was presented, the use it could reasonably be put to, and the time it was put into circulation.

What a claimant can recover:

Property claims must exceed €500, and there is no minimum for death or personal injury. The €500 threshold bars a small property claim; it is not an excess you pay.

A producer who shows the defect was undiscoverable given the scientific and technical knowledge of the time may rely on the development-risk defence. It is narrow, and it is argued rather than assumed.

Three layers of law apply to a product in Cyprus and they get merged constantly.

What changes on 9 December 2026: the new EU Product Liability Directive

Directive (EU) 2024/2853 replaces the 1985 Directive for products placed on the market or put into service after 9 December 2026, and products placed before that date stay under the old rules. That cut-off carries the whole change. Anyone who tells you everything changes on the day has skipped half the sentence.

The page currently ranking first for this in Cyprus tells buyers that software is not covered. That is right under today's rules. It stops being right for products placed on the market after 9 December 2026, because the new Directive counts standalone software and digital manufacturing files as products.

Policy wordings drafted against the 1995 Law may not follow the new definitions. At renewal, read two lines in your own policy: how it defines "product", and which courts and countries it covers.

What product liability insurance covers, and what it doesn't

Here is what a standard Cyprus products-liability section answers, and what it leaves with you.

Territory settles more arguments than any other clause. Cyprus policies are commonly limited to judgments of Cyprus courts unless you buy a geographical extension. The USA and Canada are usually a hard exclusion rather than a loading. Declare every country you sell into before you bind, including the ones a distributor ships to on your behalf.

Defence costs are worth reading closely. They are payable where the insurer has consented, so call us before you instruct a lawyer, not after.

Limits sold locally sit commonly between €100,000 and €2,000,000, and your buyer's contract usually sets yours. A deductible applies to each claim. The amount is set at underwriting, and no Cyprus source publishes a standard figure.

Product recall and the covers that sit beside product liability

Product liability does not pay to pull your stock off the shelves. It answers someone else's claim against you. Recall pays your own cost of getting the product back, and it can be triggered before any claim exists. Cyprus food producers usually discover this at the moment they ask, which is late.

If you sell across several EU markets, the programme can be written as a master policy with local policies underneath, so each country's own requirements are met.

How to get product liability cover in Cyprus

Tell us what you make, import or supply and your annual turnover. We compare the products-liability section across the Cyprus insurers we place, and go to specialist markets when recall or contamination cover is needed. You get the policy and certificate by email, from about €300 a year.

The form asks four things: what the product is, your annual turnover, the limit you need, and which countries you sell into. The limit is usually set by the buyer's contract, so copy the figure straight off it.

Where the risk is straightforward we issue the certificate the same working day, and you get an Insurance Product Information Document before you commit. Cover starts from about €300 a year.

We are a licensed Cyprus insurance agency in Paphos, and we place this cover for businesses in Limassol, Nicosia and across the island.

Product liability is one part of business insurance in Cyprus; public liability insurance and employers' liability insurance usually sit on the same schedule.