Business insurance: which policies are mandatory for your company? (complete guide)

In France, mandatory business insurance for every company comes down to three cases: insurance for the vehicles it owns, supplementary health cover for its employees, and death and disability cover for its executive-grade staff (cadres). The others, professional liability, ten-year construction liability, financial guarantees, property cover, only become compulsory depending on your activity, your status or your contracts. The rest, cyber, directors' liability, key person, is a management choice, but it is often where an SME's survival is decided.

Which insurance policies are mandatory for every company?

Three obligations apply from the first employee or the first vehicle. Motor insurance first: Article L211-1 of the Insurance Code requires third-party liability insurance for every motor vehicle, including those owned by a company. Driving uninsured is an offence punishable by a €3,750 fine (Article L324-2 of the Highway Code). Several vehicles are covered under a fleet policy.

Collective health insurance next: since 1 January 2016, Article L911-7 of the Social Security Code requires every private employer to offer supplementary health cover to its employees, funding at least 50% of the contribution. In an audit, URSSAF reclassifies the contributions as salary and recovers three years of social charges.

Cadre death and disability cover, finally: the national agreement of 17 November 2017 requires the employer to contribute at least 1.50% of salary below the social security ceiling, more than half of it allocated to death benefits. Without a policy, the employer must pay the heirs of a deceased cadre three times the annual ceiling, i.e. €144,180 in 2026.

Is professional liability insurance mandatory for your activity?

No, unless you practise a regulated profession, as entreprendre.service-public.gouv.fr recalls. Professional liability insurance (RC Pro) is the policy that compensates third parties, clients first and foremost, for damage caused by a fault, error or omission in your services: wrong advice, a failed delivery, a delay that loses a contract. It is imposed by profession-specific texts: healthcare, lawyers, chartered accountants, real estate agents, insurance intermediaries, travel agencies, carriers. The full list and minimum limits are in our article on mandatory professional liability.

For everyone else, SaaS vendors, consultancies, agencies, manufacturers, it is optional in law but imposed in practice: almost all enterprise contracts require a professional liability certificate with a limit of €1 to €5 million.

Which policies become mandatory depending on your sector?

Certain activities trigger specific obligations, often backed by criminal penalties, on top of the three general ones.

A financial guarantee is a commitment by an insurer or a bank to repay the funds you hold on behalf of third parties (advance payments, URSSAF advances) if your company fails; it protects your clients, not you. In personal services, it is required from the first advance payment received or above €200,000 of annual services paid through the instant advance scheme; our dedicated page details the scale.

Which policies do your lease, your clients or your investors impose?

Your commercial lease almost always requires insurance of the premises and contents: that is the business property policy, which covers fire, water damage, theft and, optionally, business interruption.

Your enterprise client contracts set professional liability limits and sometimes require cyber insurance, as soon as you process their data (our analysis of these clauses). Finally, a shareholders' agreement frequently provides for directors' liability and key person cover to be taken out in the weeks following closing.

No insurance is ever "mandatory" or "optional" in the abstract: it is one or the other for a given activity, size and contract. The question is not "what does the law say?" but "what does the law say for me, today?".

How does your company's size change your obligations?

Few texts set headcount thresholds, but practice creates them. Typical situation of a services SME, excluding regulated professions:

One threshold deserves a mention: above 50 employees or €10 million in turnover, your company may fall within the scope of NIS2 if it operates in one of the 18 sectors covered. NIS2 does not impose cyber insurance, but it does impose measures that insurers require anyway.

Which policies are not mandatory but essential for an SME?

Directors' and officers' liability protects the personal assets of the president, managing director or board members when they are held liable for mismanagement or a regulatory breach (see our dedicated article). Key person insurance pays the company a lump sum if a founder or an indispensable employee dies or becomes disabled, to fund recruitment and reassure creditors and clients. Business interruption cover, finally, indemnifies the gross margin lost during the shutdown that follows a fire or a major outage: the cover that separates a loss from a closure.

How much does compliance cost a company in 2026?

Orders of magnitude observed in 2026 for a services company with 10 to 50 employees, outside regulated professions: health cover between €30 and €80 per employee per month; professional liability with a €1 to €2 million limit, between €1,000 and €5,000 a year; cyber policy, €1,000 to €3,000; office property policy, €500 to €2,000; directors' liability, €1,000 to €3,000. A services SME's insurance budget therefore generally represents between 0.5% and 1.5% of turnover, excluding health cover. Gaps between insurers for identical cover often exceed 30%; here are ten concrete levers to reduce your premium without weakening your cover.

Frequently asked questions

Does a company with no employees have any mandatory insurance?

Only if it owns a vehicle or practises a regulated profession (professional liability, ten-year liability, financial guarantee). Without employees, health cover and cadre death and disability cover do not apply.

Is professional liability insurance mandatory for a consultancy or a software vendor?

No, no text requires it. But client contracts almost always demand it, with a limit of €1 to €5 million, and a B2B company without professional liability cover does not sign enterprise contracts.

What is the penalty if my company has no collective health cover?

URSSAF reclassifies the employer contribution as salary and applies social charges over three years, with late-payment surcharges. Employees can also claim unreimbursed healthcare costs.

Has cyber insurance been mandatory since NIS2?

No. NIS2 imposes security measures and incident notifications, not insurance. But insurers' prerequisites (MFA, EDR, offline backups) overlap with its requirements, and many enterprise clients now require a cyber insurance certificate.

At Lesto, we start every file with this map: what the law and your contracts require of you, and what actually protects you, before approaching an average of nine insurers to build a programme with no duplication and no gaps. Want to know where you stand? Have your insurance analysed: our diagnosis is delivered in 72 hours on average.