There are roughly two dozen lines of insurance a commercial contractor could carry. There are five that, in the vast majority of cases, you actually need. If those five aren’t right, nothing else matters; if those five are right, the rest can be added by exposure rather than by reflex.
1. General liability
The baseline. GL covers third-party bodily injury and property damage from your operations, your premises and your completed work. If you sign a contract, this is the line the contract will reference first.
The two places contractors most often get this wrong: the additional-insured endorsement (which has to specifically include completed operations to cover the GC and owner after the job is done), and the products-completed operations limit itself (which trails the job by years and is where most expensive construction claims actually surface).
2. Workers’ compensation
Statutory in every state you work in. The premium driver is your experience modification factor — the historical loss multiplier on top of base rates. Most contractors over- or under-pay because their class codes don’t match their actual operations (an office worker coded as a roofer pays a fortune; a roofer coded as an office worker bleeds at audit time).
A class-code audit at every renewal is the single highest-leverage thing a construction broker does for you. If yours doesn’t, that’s a flag.
3. Builders risk
Cover for projects under construction — the structure, materials on site, materials in transit. Builders risk is owned either by the owner or by the contractor depending on the contract, and the language matters.
What it doesn’t cover: your finished work after the certificate of occupancy. That’s GL’s products-completed operations, not builders risk. The handoff is precise and gets fumbled.
4. Commercial auto
Anything titled to the business — pickups, dump trucks, flatbeds — needs commercial auto. And if employees use personal vehicles for company business (running to the supply house, driving to a site), you need hired and non-owned auto as well. It’s cheap and most contractors carry it.
5. Inland marine (contractor’s equipment)
The line most contractors discover after a generator gets stolen off a jobsite. Standard property covers building and contents at a fixed location. Tools, equipment and materials that move between sites need inland marine, which is dedicated cover for property in motion or off-premises.
What to layer on top — and when
Once those five are in place, two more lines come into play depending on the size and shape of the operation:
- Umbrella / excess liability — when your contracts demand $5M, $10M or $25M total limits. Cheaper than carrying those limits on each primary line individually.
- Crime / social engineering fraud — when you have a finance person making wire payments to subs and vendors. The fastest-growing loss for construction firms, and a standard crime policy almost always sub-limits it.
What’s worth declining
A few things contractors get pitched and probably don’t need:
- Standalone product recall (you’re rarely “manufacturing” in the legal sense)
- Cyber unless you hold meaningful client data or run digital payments at volume
- Owner-controlled wraps unless your project list specifically requires it
The right programme isn’t a pile of policies; it’s the five lines done right and the next two added at the right time. A broker that tries to sell you twelve is selling you complexity. A broker that gets the five right is doing the job.
