How to check a contractor's insurance (and why it protects you)

To verify a contractor's insurance, ask for a certificate of insurance, called a COI, and ask that it be sent to you directly from the contractor's insurance agent rather than handed over as a photocopy. Then check four things: the named insured matches the business you are hiring, the policy dates cover your project, the general liability coverage is active with meaningful limits, and workers compensation appears if anyone will be working who is not the owner. The whole exchange takes a day and one polite email, and a professional contractor will not blink at the request. Here is what each piece means and why the stakes are higher than most homeowners realize.

What insurance should a contractor carry?

Two coverages do the real work, and they protect against different disasters.

General liability covers damage the contractor causes to your property and injuries to people who are not the crew. If a ladder goes through a window, a pipe is nicked and floods the kitchen, or a delivery driver trips over staged materials, general liability is the policy that responds.

Workers compensation covers the crew itself. If a worker is injured on your property, workers comp pays for the medical care and lost wages, and, crucially, it stands between that injury and you. These are separate policies, and a contractor can genuinely carry one without the other, which is why you check for both rather than accepting the sentence "I'm insured."

Some states also require license bonds, which are a separate consumer protection tied to licensing rather than insurance. Bonding is worth confirming during the licensing check, which we walk through in how to check a contractor's license before hiring.

What happens if an uninsured worker gets hurt at my house?

This is the scenario that makes the paperwork worth an email. When a worker is injured and there is no workers compensation policy behind them, the injured person still needs care and still has lost wages, and they and their lawyer will look for whoever can pay. The property owner is on that list. Depending on your state and the facts, an injury on your property by an uninsured crew can reach you directly, and homeowners insurance policies vary in how they respond to construction-related claims.

The point is not to predict any particular outcome; the point is that you can remove the whole question for the price of one document. Roofing, tree work, and anything involving heights or heavy equipment carry the most injury risk, and are exactly the trades where verifying workers comp matters most.

What is a COI, and how do I get one?

A certificate of insurance is a standardized one-page summary of a business's active coverage: who is insured, by which carriers, under which policy numbers, with what limits, and through what dates. Contractors request them from their insurance agent routinely, for commercial jobs, for permits, for landlords. You are not asking for anything exotic.

The one habit that makes the document trustworthy is delivery. Ask the contractor to have their agent send the COI to your email directly. A certificate that comes straight from the agent reflects the policy as it stands today. A photocopy from a folder proves only that a policy existed whenever the copy was made; policies can lapse or be canceled after a certificate is printed, and a certificate is not the policy itself. Direct delivery quietly verifies a second thing too: that the agent and the coverage actually exist.

If a contractor stalls, bristles, or offers reasons the certificate cannot be produced, treat that as an answer. Every established contractor has fielded this request many times, and the ones with real coverage tend to be proud of it.

How do I actually read the certificate?

Four checks cover most of what matters:

• The named insured matches the exact business name on your contract and quote, not a similar name or the owner personally
• The policy period covers your project's dates, including a realistic overrun; a policy expiring mid-project deserves a follow-up
• General liability appears with per-occurrence and aggregate limits that are meaningful for the size of your job
• Workers compensation appears if the contractor has employees; owner-operators are sometimes legally exempt, which is worth confirming against your state's rules rather than taking on faith

For a larger project, you can also ask to be listed as a certificate holder, which puts your name and address on the document, and some carriers will notify certificate holders of cancellation. Your goal is not to become an insurance examiner. It is to confirm that real coverage, in the right name, spans your project.

What do I do with the paperwork afterward?

Keep it, attached to the project it covered. A COI is not just a pre-hire checkbox; it is part of the job's permanent story, alongside the quote, the contract, and the invoices. If a dispute or a damage claim surfaces months later, the certificate proves what coverage existed when the work was done, and if the same contractor returns next year, you know exactly what to re-verify instead of starting over. It slots naturally into the same file as the rest of the hiring diligence, next to the answers from the questions worth asking before you hire anyone, and a permanent document home for the house keeps it findable years after the invoice is paid.

A verified contractor, a dated certificate, and a tidy project file: none of it is dramatic, and that is the point. The work gets done, the risk stays with the people paid to carry it, and you sleep through the whole arrangement. If you want every project at your house documented this calmly, Holm keeps the paper trail for you.