Any business having experienced a product recall knows how costly this can be. Sometimes the main costs of the recall are concentrated around counteracting bad publicity, but if several or large numbers of batches are affected by the recall, the costs of the recall itself can mount up considerably.

In many large companies the overall responsibility for quality assurance and product safety is placed in a different part of the organization from the one responsible for product liability insurance and recall insurance.

As a consequence inside the organization there is not always a common understanding of what the insurance should cover and what the insurance actually does cover – or of whether and when the insurance company should become involved in the process.