Amazon adds insurance requirements for enhanced-safety listings

What changed

Amazon says its commercial-liability-insurance requirements will change on 2 November 2026. The familiar threshold remains: sellers must carry commercial liability insurance within 30 days if their Amazon.com gross proceeds exceed USD 10,000 in a month. The change adds a separate obligation for sellers with products in categories subject to enhanced safety-listing requirements. Those sellers must maintain at least USD 1 million of cover per occurrence and in the aggregate, even when they do not cross the sales threshold.

The notice names children’s products, cosmetic and ingestible products, and lithium-battery products as examples of categories that can fall within the enhanced-safety rules. It says the change applies to both new and existing listings. That makes this a catalogue-and-risk-management issue as well as a seller-policy update: an advertised ASIN can lose commercial readiness if its listing category, documentation or insurance position has not been checked.

Amazon also says sellers based in Mainland China must obtain newly submitted policies through Amazon Insurance Accelerator from the effective date. A qualifying third-party policy submitted before 2 November can continue until expiry; after expiry, the seller must use the Accelerator. The notice does not say that every insurance policy in every marketplace is changing, or identify every affected ASIN, so teams should not turn this into a blanket advertising claim.

For paid-media teams, the immediate task is a product-level review. Match planned peak-season ASINs to the affected-category guidance, confirm who owns insurance evidence, and record the cover expiry date. Compare that operational inventory with campaigns, promotions and retail-media budgets. If an offer cannot remain buyable or compliant, treating its previous advertising performance as a basis for additional spend will mislead the plan. Keep the marketplace scope, policy source and effective date attached to the checklist so that local teams can validate their own account notices.

Why it matters for advertisers

Retail teams should match advertised ASINs to affected categories and confirm coverage before committing peak-season spend.