The fire happens years after the job closes.
Commercial insurance for electrical contractors — written around completed operations, arc flash and the voltage you actually work, not around a package.
Tell us the situation.
A licensed human replies the same business day — not an auto-responder, and not five producers calling at once. We shop it across our carriers and tell you if the policy you already have is the right one.
We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.
What electrical contracting businesses actually need.
General liability
Third-party bodily injury and property damage — the line nearly every contract names by default.
Without it — A fault in finished work starts a fire in somebody else’s building, and the claim names the contractor who signed the work off.
Workers compensation
Required in almost every state the moment you have employees. Priced on payroll and class code, which is why the class code is worth arguing about.
Without it — Arc flash and electrocution are severity injuries rather than frequency ones — a single incident is a burn unit, not a week off.
Contractors errors & omissions
Covers faulty workmanship and professional mistakes — the cost of the work itself being wrong, which general liability excludes by design.
Without it — Specifying or designing a system that fails to perform is a professional claim, and design-build work puts it in play on almost every job.
Commercial auto
Vehicles the business owns and the people who drive them for work.
Without it — A van full of material on the way to a call is a work trip, and a personal auto insurer will decline it once they learn that.
Inland marine & equipment
Tools, equipment and property in transit. It picks up exactly where commercial property stops, which is the moment the item leaves the building.
Without it — Test equipment, benders and reels walk off sites, and property coverage stops at the shop door.
Umbrella & excess liability
Extra limit stacked above general liability, auto and employers liability. Usually the cheapest million dollars on the policy.
Without it — Commercial contracts require limits above primary, and a fire loss exhausts a primary limit without argument.
Contractors pollution liability
Bodily injury, property damage and clean-up caused by a pollutant your work released — chemical drift, run-off, fuel spills. The standard general liability form excludes all of it.
Without it — Oil-filled gear, PCB-era transformers and burned insulation are a clean-up bill, and the pollution exclusion reaches all three.
Surety bonds
License, bid and performance bonds. A bond guarantees you will finish the job — it protects the other party, not you, which is the part most people get wrong.
Without it — Licence and permit bonds are a condition of holding the licence in most jurisdictions, and contract bonds decide which jobs can be bid.
Key person & buy-sell funding
If an owner or an irreplaceable employee dies, this is the money that keeps the business running and funds the buy-sell agreement so the surviving owners can buy out the estate instead of ending up in business with it.
Without it — Where one licence holder qualifies the company, their death is a licensing emergency before it is anything else.
What electrical contracting operators ask us.
Why do carriers care so much about completed operations for electricians?
Because the loss shows up long after the invoice is paid. A loose connection or an undersized conductor can sit behind a wall for years, heat slowly, and then start a fire in a building that has changed hands twice since. That is a completed operations claim, and it is the reason a general contractor asks electricians for additional insured wording covering completed operations, not just ongoing. If the endorsement was not on the policy when the work was done, it does not help you when the claim arrives.
Does the voltage I work change what I can buy?
Yes, and it is usually the second question on the application. Residential and light commercial service work sits in a broad market. High voltage, line work, substation and utility work narrows it sharply, and some carriers stop entirely at a stated threshold. Solar, EV charging and battery storage are treated as their own questions now rather than as ordinary electrical, because the loss history on them is short and the fire exposure is not. State what you actually do — understating it is how a claim gets contested after the fact.
What do general contractors ask electrical subs for?
The full stack, and more of it than most trades: additional insured for ongoing and completed operations, primary and non-contributory wording, a waiver of subrogation, and often a per-project aggregate so one bad job does not exhaust the limit for every other. On larger commercial work an umbrella somewhere between one and five million is normal. Send the subcontract before you sign it and we will tell you which of those you already have.
I was non-renewed after a fire claim. Is that the end of it?
No, though it changes where the account goes. A fire loss on an electrical account is exactly the kind of history the standard market declines and the excess and surplus market prices. What matters is how the submission is put together — the cause, what changed afterwards, and whether the work mix that produced the loss is still the work mix. An account presented with the loss explained places very differently from the same account presented with the loss buried.
How is electrical contractor insurance priced?
Mainly on payroll and class code, then on the split between residential, commercial and industrial work, and then on loss history. The most common reason an electrician overpays is misclassification — service work rated as new construction, or all payroll landed in the highest available code. It is worth checking before you shop, because the audit at the end of the year is where it gets settled either way.