Should Contractors Have Their Own Insurance When Working on My House?
Yes. If an uninsured worker gets hurt on your property, your own policy may end up covering the claim.
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What their coverage pays for
A contractor's liability policy covers injuries to their own workers and damage they cause while working. Without it, those costs can fall to your homeowners policy instead, through your liability or medical payments coverage.
Workers' comp matters too
If a worker is hurt on your property and the contractor has no workers' comp, the worker or their family can come after you directly. A certificate showing both liability and workers' comp protects you from that.
Proof, not a promise
A contractor saying they're insured means nothing until you see the certificate. Ask them to send it directly from their insurer, or have the insurer confirm it, so you know the coverage is active and not expired.
Your policy has limits
Even if your homeowners policy ends up paying a claim like this, it has a liability limit listed on your declarations page. A serious injury can exceed that limit, leaving you responsible for the rest out of pocket.
Your liability limit is the backstop, not the fix
If an uninjured contractor's claim lands on your policy, your liability limit decides how much it covers. Comparing policies now shows whether a higher limit is worth it.
What if the contractor gets hurt, not their worker
A solo contractor working alone, no crew, no employees, isn't covered by workers' comp because there's no one to carry it for. If that person falls off your roof, their own health insurance may pay some of the bill, but it won't cover lost income or a lawsuit against you for an unsafe condition on the property. This is a common gap people miss because they think of workers' comp as something only larger crews need.
Some contractors carry a personal accident policy instead of workers' comp for exactly this reason. It's worth asking what they have, not just whether they're insured. A certificate of insurance will show what kind of coverage is listed and for whom. If it only names general liability, ask directly whether that covers the contractor themselves if they're hurt on the job.
Written contracts help here too, separate from the insurance question. A contract that spells out who is responsible for site safety, and that the contractor is operating as an independent business and not an employee of the homeowner, gives both sides something to point to if a dispute comes up later. Verbal agreements leave that open to interpretation, usually in the moment that matters most.
None of this changes what your own policy will do if a claim reaches it. The declarations page still lists a liability limit, and that limit still applies whether the person hurt was the contractor, a subcontractor, or someone they hired without telling you. Checking that number against what a serious injury claim could run is worth doing before a job starts, not after.
What about work that needs a permit
Some jobs, like a new roof, an electrical panel upgrade, or an addition, need a permit from the local building department. A contractor who skips this to save time or cost leaves you holding the risk, not them. If the work causes a fire or a structural problem later, your insurer can ask whether the work was permitted and inspected. If it wasn't, a claim tied to that work can be denied even if everything else about your policy is in order.
Insurance and permits are two separate questions. A fully insured contractor can still do unpermitted work, and having insurance does not fix the permit problem. Permits exist so a local inspector checks that the work meets code, which matters most for anything structural, electrical, or related to gas lines. Skipping that step means no one outside the contractor has verified the work was done safely, and your insurer is not obligated to treat the result as a covered loss if it fails.
Ask the contractor directly whether the job requires a permit and who is pulling it. In most cases, it should be the contractor, not the homeowner, since they are the one performing the work and are more familiar with local code. Keep a copy of the permit and the inspection sign-off once the job is done. If a claim comes up years later tied to that work, these are the documents that show it was done the right way.
Permitted work matters even more when it changes something about the house itself, like adding square footage or altering the electrical system. Those changes can affect what your dwelling coverage should reflect going forward, and a permit record gives a clear paper trail for that too. None of this guarantees a claim will be paid, since the specifics always depend on the cause of loss and the terms on the declarations page. But unpermitted work is one of the more avoidable reasons a claim gets questioned.
Before the work starts
Check your declarations page for your liability limit, and ask the contractor for a certificate of insurance sent directly from their insurer, before any work begins.
