Most home projects finish without incident. The reason insurance matters is the small proportion that do not, where the sums involved can be large and the question of who pays becomes immediate.
What liability insurance covers
General liability cover responds to damage caused to your property, or injury to others, arising from the contractor’s work. A tool that starts a fire, a ladder through a window, water damage from an incorrectly reconnected supply line, a vehicle reversing into a wall.
Without it, recovering those costs means pursuing the contractor personally, which is slow, uncertain, and often unsuccessful if the business has limited assets.
Why a certificate is not enough
Contractors often produce a certificate of insurance when asked. It is worth having, but understand what it shows: that a policy existed on the date the certificate was issued.
Policies get cancelled for non-payment. They lapse at renewal. A certificate from eight months ago proves very little about today. This is exactly why the L&I register is more useful than the paperwork a contractor hands you — it reflects current status rather than a historical snapshot.
What about your own insurance?
Homeowners frequently assume their own policy will absorb anything that goes wrong. Sometimes it will, but claiming on your own cover for damage caused by someone else’s negligence has consequences — excess payments, premium increases, and the claim sitting on your record.
It is also worth telling your insurer about substantial work in advance. Some policies have conditions relating to significant alterations or periods when a property is partly open to the elements, and discovering that after the fact is not the moment you want to find out.
Workers on your property
The other exposure is injury to someone working on your home. Washington operates a state workers’ compensation system, and registered contractors have obligations within it. A contractor operating outside that system creates risk that can find its way back to the homeowner.
This is one of several reasons why hiring an unregistered contractor because they are cheaper tends to be a false economy. The saving is visible; the exposure is not.
The practical checklist
Verify on the register that liability insurance is currently in force, not merely that it exists in the record. Ask for a certificate as well, and check the dates on it. If the work is substantial, tell your own insurer what is planned. And keep the contractor’s registration number with your project paperwork, because it is what everything else can be looked up from.