Liability insurance for independent contractors.

Usually the requirement comes from the people hiring them. Clients, venues, property managers, and platforms typically ask for proof of general liability before work starts, and many contracts make it a condition of the engagement. There's also a practical reason for the hiring organization to care: if a contractor damages a client's property or injures a bystander and carries no coverage of their own, the claim tends to land on whoever does have a policy.

Generally not the way people assume. Your commercial general liability policy is written around your own operations and employees. Independent contractors are usually excluded or treated as a separate exposure, and some policies specifically carve out work performed by uninsured subcontractors. That's why most hiring organizations require contractors to carry coverage in their own name rather than relying on their own policy to stretch.

Third-party bodily injury, third-party property damage, and the legal defense costs that come with either. It does not cover the contractor's own injuries, which is what workers' compensation is for, and it does not cover mistakes in their professional work, which is what professional liability (E&O) handles. Those are three separate lines, and a contractor may need more than one depending on the work.

It depends on the work: the scope of the engagement, how long it runs, and the risk class of the job. Annual policies charge the same premium whether the contractor works twelve months or two, which is why per-assignment pricing exists. Coverage is priced against the actual engagement, so short, low-risk work is priced accordingly.

Coverage binds in under a minute once the contractor has opted in, and the certificate is issued as an instant PDF naming the client, venue, or platform as additional insured where required. It can be pulled through the API or the dashboard, so the certificate is in hand before the first day of work rather than chased afterward.

49 states plus DC. Hawaii is the one state where general liability is not currently available. Everywhere else binds per job through the same API. (Workers' compensation has a different footprint: 46 states plus DC, because North Dakota, Ohio, Washington, and Wyoming run monopolistic state funds.)