Contractor workers compensation covers employee injury medical care and lost wages and protects you from most injury lawsuits. For contractors the defining issues are accurate class codes, the premium audit, uninsured subcontractors that get charged to your policy, owner exclusions, and avoiding ghost policies that do not really cover your crew.
Class codes and why they matter
Construction workers comp is priced by job classification and payroll, and trade class codes carry very different rates. Misclassified payroll, putting field labor in a lower office code, or misallocating between trades, either overcharges you or invalidates coverage at audit. Getting the codes right from the start, and reviewing them, is one of the largest levers on a contractor's premium.
The premium audit
Workers comp premium is an estimate at the start of the year and is trued up at audit against actual payroll. For contractors the audit also looks at subcontractors: if a sub cannot prove its own workers comp, the auditor can add that sub's payroll to your policy and bill you for it. A clean audit depends on accurate records and verified subcontractor certificates. We help you prepare so the audit does not produce a shock bill.
Subs, owners, and ghost policies
Three traps recur. Uninsured subcontractors become your exposure and your premium. Owners and officers can sometimes exclude themselves, which lowers premium but leaves their own injuries uncovered, a real tradeoff. And ghost policies, minimum policies that cover no actual employees, satisfy a certificate request but do not protect a real crew. We make sure the policy matches how your business actually operates.
How we handle it
We confirm class codes reflect the work your people actually do and review the experience modifier. We help you collect and verify subcontractor coverage so their payroll is not charged to you. We walk through owner exclusion tradeoffs honestly. And we prepare you for the audit so the year-end true-up is accurate, not a surprise.
