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For owners and commercial reps getting ready to apply to a property manager, risk manager or program network. This page is what a client checks before it approves you; the coverages to carry are in What Insurance a Restoration Company Actually Needs.
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Reviewed October 2026. Policy forms and state insurance rules vary. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with your broker, the policy itself, or an attorney before you rely on it.
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The fastest way to get disqualified from commercial work is to show up under-insured or under-credentialed. Property managers, risk managers, and program networks gate contractors on insurance and certifications before they ever look at your work. The commercial bar is laid out below, so you can be ready before you apply.
Commercial and program work typically requires higher limits and coverages most residential shops do not carry:
Commercial general liability, often with umbrella or excess coverage stacked on top.
Pollution liability (contractors pollution liability, or CPL). Plenty of restorers assume their general liability covers pollution. It usually does not.
A standard commercial general liability policy carries a pollution exclusion in the base coverage form itself, at Insurance Services Office (ISO) form CG 00 01 Coverage A exclusion f. The fungi or bacteria exclusion is not in that base form. Carriers add it by endorsement, so finding no mold exclusion in your CG 00 01 does not mean you are covered for mold. It means you have not checked the endorsements yet.
Pull the coverage form and the schedule of endorsements on your declarations page, and have your broker point to each exclusion by form number. CPL is the policy that fills that gap.
First ask which trigger yours uses. CPL is written on both a claims-made and an occurrence basis, as the International Risk Management Institute's (IRMI) 2014 commentary Contractors Environmental Liability Insurance: Claims-Made versus Occurrence lays out, and Pollution and Environmental Liability Insurance: Where Your GL Policy Stops on a Mold or Sewage Job covers it further.
A claims-made policy responds to claims reported during the policy period rather than to work performed during it. If yours is claims-made, two consequences follow, and both cost real money if you miss them. Your retroactive date has to reach back far enough to cover the older jobs still capable of producing a claim. And if you switch carriers or stop carrying the coverage, you have to buy an extended reporting period, the tail, or the mold claim that surfaces three years after a job you did correctly arrives with no policy behind it. The policy does not include the tail on its own; you have to decide to buy it.
Get the trigger, the retroactive date, and the extended reporting period option from your broker in writing.
Workers' compensation at statutory limits.
Commercial auto and equipment coverage appropriate to commercial sites.
Endorsements the building or program will ask for: additional-insured status, waiver of subrogation, and primary-and-noncontributory wording. Knowing these terms and providing them fast is a credibility signal by itself.
The certificate of insurance is not the coverage. A certificate of insurance (COI) is evidence that a policy exists on the day it was issued. It grants nothing, and the language a broker types into the description box does not create additional insured status. That status comes from an endorsement attached to the policy, and on the ISO forms there are two you will be asked for, doing different jobs.
CG 20 10 covers the additional insured for your ongoing operations. CG 20 37 covers them for completed operations, after you have finished and left. A general contractor or property manager who asks for both and receives only CG 20 10 may have no additional-insured protection for the claim that arrives a year after handover, which on restoration work is exactly when mold and moisture claims arrive.
Ask your broker to send you the actual endorsement pages, keep them with the COI, and attach both when a client asks. Sending an endorsement, not just a certificate, is a small move that reads as competence to a risk manager.
Beyond your Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) certifications, commercial and healthcare decision makers often look for: