Bond and insurance, across the register

L&I tells you to check the bond and the insurance before you sign. Here is what those two files contain once you join them to the register.

What the law requires

To register as a contractor in Washington you must file a surety bond — $30,000 for a general contractor, $15,000 for a specialty contractor — and prove liability insurance. The bond is what a customer claims against when work goes wrong, and RCW 18.27.040 says the customer of an unregistered contractor cannot claim on it at all.

⚠️ How to read the gaps, carefully

5,388 active registrations — 7.1% — have no current liability policy in the file L&I publishes. That sentence is exact, and it is not the same as “these contractors are uninsured”. A policy can be recorded late, filed under a different entity, or simply not present in this extract.

What it does mean is that the check L&I asks you to make comes back empty for those registrations. That is worth a question before you sign, not a conclusion.

Which bonding companies stand behind the register

Which insurers

Active registrations with no policy on file