General contractor insurance in Spokane

What Washington requires

To register as a general contractor in Washington you need a $30,000 continuous surety bond filed with L&I and general liability at the state minimums. Those amounts rose on 1 July 2024 under RCW 18.27.040 — if your bond still reads $12,000, it is the old figure and your registration is out of date.

The state minimums are a floor, not what the job will ask for. Most owners and construction managers in Spokane want $1M per occurrence and $2M aggregate before you set foot on site, usually with additional insured status on a primary and non-contributory basis and a waiver of subrogation. Those endorsements are not automatic and not always free.

Your subs are your exposure

If a sub works uninsured, or their policy lapses mid-project, the claim comes to you. Collecting certificates at onboarding is the easy part; the part that catches general contractors out is that a certificate is a snapshot, not a guarantee — it says nothing about whether the policy is still in force six months later. Carriers audit this, and uninsured sub payroll gets charged back to you at your own rate. A written sub agreement requiring insurance, with the certificates actually tracked, is worth real money at audit.

What drives your premium

Revenue, payroll, the trade split across your crews, your claims history and how much of the work is subcontracted. Residential remodel rates differently from ground-up commercial; anything above three storeys or involving structural work moves you into a different appetite entirely. Carriers also look hard at whether you do any roofing — even occasionally — because it changes the risk profile of the whole account.