General Liability Insurance for Contractors
The certificate every GC and every lender wants to see before you so much as unload a ladder.
General liability is the foundation of a contractor’s insurance program: it covers third-party bodily injury and property damage that come out of your operations and your completed work — a visitor is hurt on your jobsite, your crew damages the property next door, or a defect in finished work causes damage months later. But for contractors, the policy is only half the job. The other half is the endorsements your contracts demand — additional insured, waiver of subrogation, and primary & non-contributory wording — plus the products-completed operations coverage that keeps responding after you’ve left the site. Get those right and you’ll sail through COI review and win the work; get them wrong and you’ll fail the certificate check or end up paying for an uninsured sub’s mistake at audit.
Reviewed for accuracy by Mark Hutchings, Licensed Insurance Producer (NV #3600994, CA #6003400).
Which contractors need General Liability?
- General contractors and construction managers
- Trade and specialty contractors — electrical, HVAC, plumbing, roofing, concrete, framing, drywall, landscaping
- Subcontractors signing GC contracts that require coverage and endorsements
- Design-build firms (pair GL with Professional Liability for the design side)
- Anyone pulling permits or holding a license — Nevada’s State Contractors Board and California’s CSLB tie into proof of coverage
- Any contractor who must name an owner, GC, or lender as additional insured to get on the job
What it covers
- Third-party bodily injury on the jobsite (a delivery driver, inspector, or passerby is hurt)
- Third-party property damage from your operations
- Products & completed-operations — damage caused by your finished work after you’ve left
- Personal & advertising injury (libel, slander, advertising disputes)
- Medical payments — small, no-fault medical bills regardless of fault
- Legal defense, settlements, and judgments up to your limits
- The endorsements contracts require — additional insured, waiver of subrogation, primary & non-contributory — added to the policy
What it doesn’t cover
- Injuries to your own employees — covered by Workers’ Compensation
- Your tools and equipment — covered by Contractors Equipment / Inland Marine
- Vehicles and mobile equipment on the road — covered by Commercial Auto
- The cost to redo your own faulty workmanship — GL covers resulting damage to other property, not the rework itself
- Professional or design errors — covered by Professional Liability (E&O)
- Property under construction (the building itself) — covered by Builder’s Risk
- Pollution and many subcontractor exposures if you don’t collect their certificates
Real claim scenarios
Injury on your jobsite
A delivery driver trips over staged materials and is injured. Your GL responds to the medical costs and the legal defense — and the GC you named as additional insured is protected too.
Damage to adjacent property
Your crew nicks a buried utility line and floods the neighboring suite. GL pays to repair the third-party property your operations damaged.
Completed-operations defect
A roof you finished last spring leaks in the first big storm and ruins the interior below. Products-completed operations coverage responds to the resulting damage long after the job closed out.
Scenarios are illustrative; actual coverage depends on your policy terms.
How it’s priced
Contractor GL is rated mostly on your payroll or subcontracted cost and the risk class of your trade. Higher-hazard work (roofing, framing at height) and heavy subcontracting push premium up; the limits and endorsements your contracts require shape it from there.
- Class code by trade — a roofer rates very differently than a finish carpenter
- Exposure basis — typically payroll and/or subcontracted cost (sometimes gross receipts)
- Limits and deductible — $1M per occurrence / $2M aggregate is typical; contracts often require more plus an umbrella
- Use of subcontractors and whether you collect certificates and additional-insured endorsements from them
- Work type — residential vs. commercial vs. new tract or condo (some carriers restrict tract homes and condos in NV/CA)
- Claims history and years licensed
What to watch out for
- Additional insured forms are not all equal — “ongoing operations” vs. “ongoing AND completed operations.” Contracts usually require both; match the endorsement to the contract.
- Primary & non-contributory and waiver of subrogation must be on the policy, not merely typed onto the certificate — a COI is proof, not coverage.
- The “your work” and subcontractor exclusions can bite: use a written subcontractor agreement (reviewed by your attorney) and collect a certificate plus an additional-insured endorsement from every sub — or you’ll pay for their exposure at audit and may have a coverage gap.
- The products-completed operations aggregate is separate from the general aggregate — keep it adequate if you do build or installation work.
- Watch for a “prior work” / prior-completed-operations exclusion — some policies exclude claims arising from work you finished before a set retroactive date, which can quietly gut your completed-operations coverage when you switch carriers. Keep coverage continuous and mind the retro date.
- Residential and condo/tract exclusions are common in some states — read them before you assume a project is covered.
- Watch for action-over and injury-to-additional-insured exclusions, which can quietly gut the protection a GC is counting on.
- On wrap-up jobs (OCIP/CCIP) the onsite work may already be covered — don’t double-pay, and mind the gaps for your off-site and pre/post-project exposure.
General Liability for Contractors — FAQs
General Liability for contractors, done right
We’ll match your limits and endorsements to what your contracts, leases, and licenses actually require.