Original research · Licensing
Does Your Roofer Have to Be Insured?
"Licensed and insured" is four separate legal instruments compressed into three words. They protect different people against different things, and in several jurisdictions the law requires none of them.
Written by HyreRoof Research Primary-source research and fact checking
The finding
Four instruments, not one
- General liability insurance
- Protects you. Covers property damage and bodily injury the contractor causes to third parties: the ladder through your window, the tear-off that let water into your ceiling, the neighbour’s car under the debris chute. This is the policy people mean when they say "insured", and it is the one most worth confirming.
- Workers' compensation
- Protects the crew, and therefore protects you. Pays medical costs and lost wages when a worker is injured on the job. Its significance to a homeowner is indirect but sharp: where a roofer carries no workers’ compensation, an injured worker’s route to recovery may run through the homeowner’s own liability cover instead. On a trade performed at height, this is not a theoretical concern.
- Surety bond
- A financial backstop, not a quality assessment. A three-party guarantee under which a surety pays out, up to the bond amount, and only up to it, if the contractor fails to meet obligations the bond covers. The contractor is then liable to repay the surety. A bond is not insurance for you, it is credit for them, and the sums are typically small relative to a re-roof.
- Certificate of insurance
- Evidence, not cover. A one-page summary describing policies that existed when the certificate was issued. Several states legislate its status explicitly: a certificate is issued as a matter of information only, confers no rights on the holder, and does not amend, extend or alter the coverage of the underlying policy. It can be genuine and still describe a policy cancelled the following week.
These four do different jobs and a jurisdiction can require any combination of them, including none. Compressing them into "licensed and insured" is not a shorthand, it destroys the only information in the phrase.
The distinction that makes this page hard
Before any table below can be read correctly, one distinction has to be nailed down, because almost every published comparison gets it wrong.
Whether an instrument is a condition of the credential is a different question from whether it is required by law at all. Denver does not require a roofing contractor to carry workers’ compensation in order to hold a Denver roofing licence.
That is not the same as saying a Denver roofer with employees may lawfully go without workers’ compensation, state employment law is a separate body of rules with its own thresholds and its own enforcement, and we did not verify Colorado’s.
The two questions have different practical consequences. If cover is a condition of the credential, the licensing authority checked it at least once and will normally have a record. If it is only an obligation of employment law, nobody checked it at the point the credential was issued, and there may be no register to consult at all.
The matrix below records only the first question: what the credential itself demanded. Workers’ compensation as general employment law is handled separately, further down.
What eight jurisdictions require to issue the credential
Two states sit at one end requiring all three instruments. Four jurisdictions sit at the other requiring none, and one of those, Austin, requires none because there is no credential in existence to attach a requirement to.
HyreRoof analysis: the pattern that emerges is not a simple strong-to-weak gradient. It is that competence checking and financial checking are almost independent of one another. Denver checks competence hard and money not at all. Washington checks money and, as our state licensing study established, does not examine roofing competence whatsoever. Only Minnesota and San Antonio’s structural tier do meaningful amounts of both.
The verified requirements in full
| Jurisdiction | Level | Credential | General liability | Workers' comp | Surety bond | Src |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minnesota | State | Residential roofer licence | Statute: $100,000 per occurrence and $300,000 aggregate for bodily injury, plus $25,000 property damage, or a single limit of $300,000 per occurrence and $300,000 aggregate. The department’s summary page states it differently; see the note below | Required, unless the applicant has no employees and no intention of hiring any other than a spouse, parent or child | $15,000 surety bond with power of attorney | 1, 2, 3 |
| Washington | State | Contractor registration, roofing specialty | Statute: $50,000 for property damage, $100,000 for injury or death to any one person, $200,000 for injury or death to more than one person. May be met by an assigned account instead of a policy | Mandatory for nearly every employer, and only from the L&I state fund or certified self-insurance. The account number is part of the registration application | $15,000 for specialty contractors; $30,000 for general contractors, since 1 July 2024 | 4, 5, 6, 7 |
| San Antonio, TX home improvement tier | Municipal | Home Improvement Contractor registration | At least $300,000 per occurrence combined for property damage and bodily injury, $600,000 aggregate, $300,000 products and completed operations | not verified | not verified | 8 |
| San Antonio, TX structural tier | Municipal | Residential Building Contractor registration | At least $500,000 per occurrence, $1,000,000 aggregate, $500,000 products and completed operations | not verified | not verified | 9 |
| Denver, CO | Municipal | Specialty Class D roofing licence | None. Insurance appears nowhere in the eleven contractor responsibilities at Section 126.1 | Not a condition of the licence | None requested on the application | 10, 11 |
| Dallas, TX | Municipal | Contractor registration, roof contractor | None. Section 1103.1 enumerates six categories of required information and insurance is not among them | Not a condition of registration | None in Subchapter 11 | 12 |
| Austin, TX | Municipal | none, roofing does not register with the city | There is no roofing credential to attach a requirement to | No credential, and no state requirement either | No credential | 13, 14 |
| Texas | State | none, roofing is unregulated at state level | No state roofing credential exists | Private employers "can choose to carry workers’ compensation insurance coverage, but it is not required in most cases" | No state roofing credential exists | 15, 16 |
Each row read at the statute, the issuing agency or the municipal code on 3 September 2026.
Every figure describes what is required to obtain or hold the credential. None of them describes what a particular contractor actually carries today, which no register can tell you and only a current certificate from the insurer can.
The verified minimum liability limits, ranked
The highest verified municipal requirement, San Antonio’s structural tier at $500,000 per occurrence, is higher than either state minimum on this page. The lowest verified requirements are zero, and four of the eight rows are zero.
HyreRoof analysis: it is worth being clear about what these numbers are and are not. A statutory minimum is a floor set by a legislature or a building department, not a recommendation and not an estimate of exposure. Minnesota’s $300,000 per occurrence with $10,000 of property damage cover is a threshold for holding a licence.
Whether $10,000 of property damage cover is adequate to the damage a roofing crew can do to a house is a separate question the statute does not address, and the answer is frequently no. A minimum is the least the law will tolerate, never a measure of sufficiency.
The two poles, in the jurisdictions’ own words
Minnesota, all three, by statute, before the licence issues
Minnesota is the completest case on this page. Minn. Stat. § 326B.86, subd. 1 provides that "A licensed residential roofer must post a bond with a penal sum of at least $15,000." Subdivision 2 requires commercial general liability insurance "which includes premises and operations insurance and products and completed operations insurance, with limits of at least $100,000 per occurrence, $300,000 aggregate limit for bodily injury, and property damage insurance with limits of at least $25,000 or a policy with a single limit for bodily injury and property damage of $300,000 per occurrence and $300,000 aggregate limits."
Workers’ compensation is wired in from a different statute. Minn. Stat. § 176.182 requires every state and local licensing agency to "withhold the issuance or renewal of a license or permit to operate a business in Minnesota until the applicant presents acceptable evidence of compliance" with the workers’ compensation requirement. The department accepts a written explanation instead from an applicant with no employees and no intention of hiring any in the next year, other than a spouse, parent or child.
HyreRoof analysis: a homeowner who confirms an active Minnesota residential roofer licence has, by that single fact, confirmed that all three instruments existed when the licence was issued or renewed. No other jurisdiction on this page lets one lookup do that much work.
Minnesota also disagrees with itself, and the statute wins
This is worth recording carefully, because it is the kind of error that propagates. Minnesota’s Department of Labor and Industry summarises the requirement on its roofer licence page as "Liability insurance with limits of at least $300,000 per occurrence, which must include at least $10,000 property damage coverage."
That does not match § 326B.86, subd. 2, which sets property damage cover at $25,000 on the split-limit option and contains no $10,000 figure at all. Nor does it match the department’s own binding paperwork: the Certificate of Insurance in the residential roofer licence packet reproduces the statutory language verbatim and certifies compliance with § 326B.86, subd. 2.
HyreRoof analysis: the $10,000 figure most plausibly originates in a neighbouring section of the same chapter, Minn. Stat. § 326B.46, subd. 2, which governs plumbing contractors and does require property damage insurance "with limits of at least $10,000". Where an agency summary and the statute it summarises disagree, the statute governs, and the form the agency actually makes you sign is the better guide to what is enforced. We publish both and flag the conflict rather than silently choosing the tidier number.
Washington: the money is checked, the competence is not
RCW 18.27.040(1) requires "a surety bond issued by a surety insurer who meets the requirements of chapter 48.28 RCW in the sum of $30,000 if the applicant is a general contractor or $15,000 if the applicant is a specialty contractor." Roofing registers as a specialty.
Those figures took effect on 1 July 2024; L&I recorded at the time that the general bond had "more than doubled" from $12,000, that specialty bonds were "rising to $15,000 from the previous $6,000", that this was "the first time general and specialty contractor bond amounts have been raised since 2001", and that contractors would move to the new amount at their own next renewal rather than immediately.
The insurance requirement sits in RCW 18.27.050(1): "insurance or financial responsibility in the form of an assigned account in the amount of fifty thousand dollars for injury or damages to property, and one hundred thousand dollars for injury or damage including death to any one person, and two hundred thousand dollars for injury or damage including death to more than one person." It is a split-limit form, and it may be satisfied by an assigned account acceptable to the department rather than by a policy at all.
HyreRoof analysis, and it is the sharpest thing in the Washington record: the legislation that raised the bonds in 2024 left the insurance minimums alone. Those figures date from 2001. Washington has revisited what a contractor must post as a bond within the last two years, and has not revisited what a contractor must carry as liability cover in a quarter of a century.
Workers’ compensation is mandatory for nearly every Washington employer, with an enumerated exclusion list at RCW 51.12.020 that does not reach roofing, and it is wired into registration directly. RCW 18.27.030(1)(c) requires the application to carry "Evidence of workers’ compensation coverage for the applicant’s employees working in Washington", by industrial insurance account number or self-insurer number. Washington also does not permit private workers’ compensation coverage at all: an employer buys from the L&I state fund or becomes a certified self-insurer.
So Washington verifies a bond, a liability policy and a state-fund workers’ compensation account, and, as our state licensing study established, requires no roofing examination and no experience. Washington checks whether there is money behind the contractor. It does not check whether the contractor can roof.
Texas: the one state where workers’ compensation is elective
Texas Labor Code § 406.002 is headed "COVERAGE GENERALLY ELECTIVE" and provides that "Except for public employers and as otherwise provided by law, an employer may elect to obtain workers’ compensation insurance coverage." The Texas Department of Insurance puts it in plainer terms: "In Texas, private employers can choose to carry workers’ compensation insurance coverage (subscribers), but it is not required in most cases."
TDI also makes the comparative claim itself, which is why we are willing to repeat it: "Texas is the only state that allows private-sector employers the option of not purchasing workers’ compensation insurance or becoming ‘non-subscribers’ to the state system. It has been this way since 1913." The carve-outs are real, public employers must carry it, and so must private employers working under a building or construction contract with a governmental entity.
A non-subscriber is not free of obligations. Section 406.004 requires written notice to the Division of Workers’ Compensation that the employer elects not to obtain coverage. Section 406.005 requires the employer to tell each new employee at hiring whether coverage exists, and to post notices "at conspicuous locations at the employer’s place of business". Failing either is an administrative violation.
And the trade-off is written into the statute. Section 406.033(a) provides that in a suit by an employee of a non-covered employer, "it is not a defense that: (1) the employee was guilty of contributory negligence; (2) the employee assumed the risk of injury or death; or (3) the injury or death was caused by the negligence of a fellow employee." A Texas non-subscriber trades the no-fault system for ordinary negligence liability stripped of its three classic defences. That is a deliberate legislative bargain rather than an oversight, but it means an injured roofer’s route to recovery runs through litigation rather than through a claims process.
The complete null case
Put the verified facts about Austin, Texas end to end. The state does not license roofing. The city registers mechanical, electrical and plumbing trade contractors, and not roofers. Asphalt shingles replacing asphalt shingles are exempt from a building permit outside the Wildland-Urban Interface, so there is no permit and no final inspection. And workers’ compensation is elective for private employers in Texas.
A roofing crew can therefore work legally on an Austin house with no licence, no registration, no permit, no inspection, no general liability insurance and no workers’ compensation. Every one of those is verified at a primary source, and each is individually unremarkable. It is the stack that is remarkable, and nothing in the transaction discloses it to the homeowner.
Where cities fill the gap the state left
The Austin stack is not what Texas looks like everywhere, and the difference is entirely municipal. San Antonio, in the same state under the same absent regulator, requires a roofing contractor to file a Certificate of Liability Insurance from a carrier authorised to do business in Texas, naming the City of San Antonio as certificate holder, with coverage valid at the date of application and proof of at least a year forward.
The home-improvement tier requires at least $300,000 per occurrence, $600,000 aggregate and $300,000 for products and completed operations; the structural tier requires $500,000, $1,000,000 and $500,000.
San Antonio also places the maintenance obligation on the contractor in terms: if the certificate expires, "it is the responsibility of the registered Home Improvement Contractor to renew and submit the updated Certificate of Insurance". That is a meaningfully stronger construction than a one-off filing, because it makes lapse a registration problem rather than a private matter between contractor and insurer.
Dallas, 270 miles north and in the same state, requires none of it. Its contractor registration provision enumerates six categories of information the application must contain, names, addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers and the place of business, and insurance is not among them. The full municipal picture is in our companion study, the cities that license your roofer when the state will not.
HyreRoof analysis: this is the practical reason the state map is not enough. Two homeowners in the same state, both hiring a contractor who is fully compliant with every rule that applies to them, can be standing behind completely different amounts of insurance, $300,000 in one city and nothing at all in another.
A real licence with no money behind it
Denver deserves separate treatment because it is the case most likely to mislead. Denver runs a genuine roofing licensing programme: three distinct roofing certificates, two years of documented field experience evidenced as 24 projects across 24 different months for the commercial certificate, and a building official who assesses that evidence.
It attaches no insurance requirement to any of it. Denver’s contractor licence application asks for a supervisor certificate, Secretary of State filings, identification and a fee: no certificate of insurance and no bond. Section 126.1 of the Denver Building and Fire Code lists eleven responsibilities of a licensed contractor and insurance is not one of them. The only contractor insurance requirement in the administrative chapter is Section 126.4, "Demolition and Moving Liability Insurance", which requires an ACORD certificate from contractors demolishing or moving buildings and does not reach roofing.
HyreRoof analysis: a Denver roofing licence is strong evidence of one thing and no evidence at all of another. It says a building official reviewed a documented project history. It says nothing about whether there is a policy behind the company if a ladder goes through a window. A homeowner who treats "city licensed" in Denver as covering both has made a reasonable inference from the word and an incorrect one from the law.
A bond is not insurance, and the difference matters
What a surety bond does
Three parties: the contractor (principal), the surety, and whoever the bond runs in favour of (obligee), often the state or the city rather than you directly.
If the contractor fails to meet the obligations the bond covers, the surety may pay out up to the bond amount and no further. The contractor is then liable to reimburse the surety in full.
It is therefore closer to a line of credit the contractor guarantees than to protection purchased on your behalf. It also functions as a soft screen: a surety underwrites before issuing, so a bonded contractor has passed somebody’s financial check.
Verified amounts on this page: $15,000 in Minnesota, and $15,000 for a Washington specialty contractor: the latter raised from $6,000 on 1 July 2024, the first increase since 2001.
What general liability insurance does
Two parties and a promise to pay third-party claims: property damage and bodily injury the contractor causes in the course of the work.
Limits are expressed per occurrence and in aggregate, and the two are different protections. San Antonio’s home-improvement tier requires $300,000 per occurrence but $600,000 aggregate: the aggregate is the total the policy will pay across the whole period, across every claim.
The products and completed operations aggregate is the one homeowners should care about most and hear about least. It is the part that responds after the crew has left, which, for a roof, is when nearly all the damage becomes apparent.
San Antonio requires $300,000 of completed-operations aggregate on the home-improvement tier and $500,000 on the structural tier.
If you can only confirm one thing, confirm general liability with completed operations. A $15,000 bond against a $30,000 re-roof is a partial refund in a bad month, not protection against a ruined ceiling.
What a certificate of insurance actually proves
The certificate of insurance is the document nearly every homeowner is shown, and the one whose limits are least understood. Several states have legislated its status precisely because it was being relied on for more than it can bear, and the statutory language is unusually blunt.
Minnesota, which has the strictest roofer licensing on this page, also has the clearest statement. Minn. Stat. § 60A.39, subd. 1 defines a certificate as "a document that provides evidence of property or liability insurance coverage and the amount of insurance issued, and does not convey any contractual rights to the certificate holder." Subdivision 3 requires a certificate issued to anyone other than the policyholder to carry the statement "This certificate or memorandum of insurance does not affirmatively or negatively amend, extend, or alter the coverage afforded by the insurance policy."
Texas legislates the same principle in its own chapter. Tex. Ins. Code § 1811.051(b) provides that "A certificate of insurance or any other type of document may not convey a contractual right to a certificate holder", and § 1811.101(a)(2) requires an approved certificate form to carry the phrase "for information purposes only" or similar language.
Three consequences follow, and all three are practical.
A certificate is a snapshot, not a subscription. It describes the position on the day it was issued. A policy cancelled for non-payment a fortnight later leaves the certificate looking exactly as valid as it did before.
This is why San Antonio’s construction, placing an ongoing duty on the registrant to renew and submit an updated certificate when the old one expires, is meaningfully stronger than a single filing, and why a certificate dated eleven months ago tells you very little about today.
The cancellation-notice line does not protect you either. This is the trap most homeowners fall into, and Minnesota closes it explicitly: § 60A.39, subd. 4 provides that a certificate "must not provide for notice of cancellation that exceeds the statutory notice of cancellation provided to the policyholder or a period of notice specified in the policy." The familiar "30 days written notice" wording on a certificate confers no right on you to be told when the roofer’s policy lapses mid-job.
A certificate cannot give you rights the policy does not. Being handed one, or named on it as certificate holder, does not make you an insured party. Being named as an additional insured is a different thing entirely, and it is done by policy endorsement rather than by the certificate. New York’s Department of Financial Services put the general rule as plainly as any regulator: "A certificate of insurance cannot confer new or additional rights beyond those set forth in the referenced insurance policy."
HyreRoof analysis, and the neatest artefact we found: Minnesota’s own residential roofer licence packet prints that disclaimer on the face of the Certificate of Insurance the state requires. The document the state demands as proof of cover tells you, in the state’s own words, that it does not amend, extend or alter the coverage.
The defence is trivial and almost nobody uses it: ask for the certificate to reach you directly from the insurer or the broker named on it, rather than from the contractor. That single step establishes authenticity and currency at once, which is more than any licence lookup in this study can do.
Workers' compensation as employment law, not licensing
| Jurisdiction | Position for construction employers | What the statute or agency says |
|---|---|---|
| Texas | Elective | Tex. Lab. Code § 406.002: "an employer may elect to obtain workers’ compensation insurance coverage." TDI: private employers "can choose to carry… but it is not required in most cases", and Texas "is the only state that allows private-sector employers the option". Non-subscribers must notify the division, notify and post for employees, and lose the contributory-negligence, assumed-risk and fellow-employee defences. |
| Florida | Required from the first employee | Fla. Stat. § 440.02(20)(b)2 defines employment to include "all private employments in which four or more employees are employed by the same employer or, with respect to the construction industry, all private employment in which one or more employees are employed by the same employer." Roofing falls inside the § 440.02(10) definition of construction industry. |
| Tennessee | Required from the first employee | The Bureau of Workers’ Compensation states that "All employers in the construction industry… with one or more employees are required to obtain workers’ compensation insurance coverage", against a general threshold elsewhere of five or more employees. Owners of construction businesses must cover themselves unless separately exempted. |
| Washington | Required, and only from the state fund | Mandatory for nearly every employer, with an enumerated exclusion list at RCW 51.12.020 that does not reach roofing. Washington does not permit private coverage: an employer buys from the L&I state fund or becomes a certified self-insurer. RCW 18.27.030(1)(c) makes the account number part of the contractor registration application. |
| Minnesota | Required, and tied to the roofer licence | Minn. Stat. § 176.182 requires every licensing agency to withhold issuance or renewal of a business licence "until the applicant presents acceptable evidence of compliance" with the coverage requirement. Minnesota is the clearest verified case of employment law and licensing being deliberately wired together. |
| Colorado | Required from the first employee, but not checked at licensing | The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment states that "If you have one or more employees working for you in Colorado, you must have workers’ compensation insurance and maintain it at all times", applying to part-time, full-time and family members alike. Denver does not verify it when issuing a roofing licence. |
Colorado is the row that shows why the distinction at the top of this page matters. A Denver roofer with employees is required by state law to carry workers’ compensation, and the city that licenses them never checks. The obligation is real; the verification is absent. Florida and Tennessee are the pattern worth noticing in the other direction: both drop an otherwise higher threshold to one employee specifically for construction, because of what the work is. Texas applies no threshold in either direction.
Why the workers’ compensation question is really a homeowner question
Homeowners tend to file workers’ compensation under "the contractor’s business, not mine". On a roof, that is the wrong filing.
Roofing is performed at height, on a sloped surface, frequently in heat, and the injuries it produces are severe rather than minor. How severe, and how the federal record counts it, is set out in the roofing fatality atlas. When an injured worker has no workers’ compensation to claim against, the routes to recovery that remain run toward whoever else might be liable, which can include the property owner, and therefore the homeowner’s own liability cover. Workers’ compensation exists precisely to keep those claims inside a no-fault system, and where it is absent, they can leave it.
HyreRoof analysis: this is why the Texas position deserves more attention than it gets. Being a non-subscriber is entirely lawful and many established Texas employers are non-subscribers with their own occupational injury plans. But "lawful" is not "equivalent", and a homeowner is entitled to know which arrangement is on their roof. The useful question is not "are you insured" (everyone answers yes) but "do you carry workers’ compensation, or are you a non-subscriber?" That question has only two answers and both are informative.
We deliberately publish no injury or fatality statistics on this page. Figures for roofing injury rates exist in federal data and we have not yet verified them to the standard this site requires, so the argument above rests on the structure of the liability rules rather than on numbers we have not checked.
What to actually ask for, in order
- A certificate of insurance sent to you by the insurer or broker, not the contractor
This one step establishes authenticity and currency at the same time, and it is the single highest-value check available to a homeowner in any jurisdiction on this page.
- The completed operations aggregate, not just the per-occurrence limit
Roof failures show up after the crew has left. Completed operations is the part of the policy that responds then. San Antonio requires it explicitly; most homeowners never look for it.
- A straight answer on workers’ compensation
Ask whether they carry it or are a non-subscriber. In Texas both answers are lawful, which is exactly why the question is worth asking rather than assuming.
- Dates that cover your project window
A policy expiring mid-job is a common and entirely mundane failure. Compare the certificate dates against your expected start and finish, not against today.
- The bond amount, treated as what it is
Do not read a bond as insurance. A $15,000 bond against a re-roof is a partial recovery route capped well below the contract value, and the contractor must repay the surety in any event.
- Do not accept a licence number as proof of insurance
In Denver, Dallas and Austin a credential proves nothing about cover, because cover is not a condition of it. Even in Minnesota, where it is, the licence proves cover existed at issue or renewal, not that a policy is in force today.
Method
For each jurisdiction we identified the authority that issues the roofing credential, if one exists, and retrieved either the governing statute, the issuing agency’s own published requirements, or the current application form, and where both a code and a form existed, both. Every figure on this page is quoted from one of those documents and dated.
Requirements are recorded in three states: verified required, verified not required, and not verified. An instrument was recorded as not required only where the governing document enumerates what an application must contain and the instrument is absent from that enumeration, Dallas Section 1103.1 and Denver Section 126.1 are both of that kind, or where no credential exists at all.
Where we did not reach the relevant document, the cell is left unverified and drawn as unverified. San Antonio’s bonding and workers’ compensation position is unverified for that reason and is not rendered as an absence.
The distinction between a condition of the credential and a general legal obligation is maintained throughout and is the reason for two separate tables. Collapsing them is the commonest error in published comparisons of this subject, and it runs in both directions: it reports states as not requiring workers’ compensation when they require it of employers generally, and it reports credentials as proving insurance when they never examined it.
One conflict is recorded rather than resolved. Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries publishes its liability requirement as "$200,000 in public liability and $50,000 property damage, or $250,000 combined single limit", while RCW 18.27.050 expresses the same obligation as $50,000 for property damage, $100,000 for injury or damage including death to any one person, and $200,000 for injury or damage including death to more than one person. These are compatible framings of one requirement rather than a contradiction, but they are not interchangeable sentences, so both are published and the chart uses the department’s per-occurrence public liability figure.
No claim on this page is taken from a secondary summary, an insurance broker’s guide, a contractor directory or a licensing service.
Limitations
- Eight jurisdictions, not fifty states and 19,000 cities
Four states and four municipal programmes are verified here. The page demonstrates that the range runs from three required instruments to none; it is not a survey, and no jurisdiction not named should be inferred from one that is.
- San Antonio bonding and workers’ compensation are unverified
Neither appears on the registration applications we retrieved, but we did not read Chapter 10-115 of the San Antonio Code of Ordinances itself, so both are recorded as unverified rather than as absent.
- Minnesota’s own two sources disagree, and we publish both
The department’s roofer licence page states liability limits of $300,000 per occurrence including $10,000 property damage. Minn. Stat. § 326B.86, subd. 2 sets $100,000 per occurrence, $300,000 aggregate for bodily injury and $25,000 property damage, or a $300,000 single limit, and the department’s own certificate form reproduces the statute. We treat the statute as governing, publish the conflict, and do not present either figure as uncontested.
- Colorado’s roofing licence position is still unconfirmed at state level
We verified that Colorado requires workers’ compensation of employers with one or more employees, and that it is not a condition of a Denver roofing licence. We have not confirmed at a state source whether Colorado licenses roofing at all: the Department of Regulatory Agencies page returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval, as recorded in our state licensing study.
- Houston could not be retrieved at all
The Houston Permitting Center returned HTTP 403 and the Public Works document server failed DNS resolution on 3 September 2026. Secondary sources describe a voluntary roofing registration carrying insurance requirements, which would be directly relevant here. It is unverified and therefore absent.
- The certificate-of-insurance statutes are illustrative, not exhaustive
Idaho and Georgia are cited as verified examples of states legislating the status of a certificate. Many states have comparable provisions and several do not. Nothing here establishes the position in a state we did not name.
- Minimums are floors, not adequacy
Every figure on this page is a statutory or departmental minimum for holding a credential. None of them is an assessment of whether that sum is adequate to the damage a roofing crew can do, and several plainly are not.
- A requirement is not a guarantee of current cover
Even where insurance is a condition of the credential, the authority verified it at issue or renewal. Policies lapse between renewals and no licence register tracks that.
- This is not legal or insurance advice
Statutes and municipal ordinances are amended frequently. Confirm the current position with the authority and the insurer before relying on it.
Questions
Is a roofer legally required to be insured?
What is the difference between general liability and workers’ compensation?
Is a surety bond the same as insurance?
Is workers’ compensation really optional in Texas?
Why should a homeowner care whether the crew has workers’ compensation?
Does a licence prove the roofer is insured?
What exactly does a certificate of insurance prove?
How do I check a certificate of insurance is genuine and current?
What is "products and completed operations" and why does it matter for a roof?
How much liability insurance does a Minnesota roofer need?
Why do Minnesota’s own two sources give different insurance figures?
Is a statutory minimum enough cover for a re-roof?
Denver licenses roofers. Does that mean Denver roofers are insured?
Does Washington require roofers to buy workers’ compensation privately?
If my city requires insurance, does anyone actually check it stays in force?
Written and audited by
HyreRoof Research
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the statute, the licensing board’s own pages, the code section or the federal dataset ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it. Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. On our first study that rule removed a Minnesota exam statistic and left two states blank. Those gaps are on the page, not in a file somewhere.
- 36
- primary sources read and cited
- 16
- federal and state government domains
- 36
- citations carrying a retrieval date
- 3
- researched pages published
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Statutes from the legislature’s own publishing system, licensing rules from the board that issues the licence, datasets from the agency that collected them. Never a directory, an aggregator or another guide.
- Three states, not two. A requirement is recorded as verified present, verified absent, or not verified. Most comparisons collapse the third into the second, which turns an unchecked cell into a factual claim.
- Retrieval dates on everything. Regulation changes. A citation without the date it was read is not a citation.
- Failures are published. When a source blocks automated retrieval we record the failure and leave the row empty, rather than filling it from a secondary summary.
- Authorship is organisational. Research is attributed to this desk, never to an invented expert. Outside commentary, where used, is attributed to named and verifiable people.
Data as of 3 September 2026. Authorship on this site is organisational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
Sources & retrieval dates
- Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes , Minn. Stat. § 326B.86, subd. 1 residential roofer bond of at least $15,000; subd. 2 commercial general liability limits Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Minnesota Dept of Labor and Industry , Roofer license: the department summary stating $300,000 per occurrence including $10,000 property damage, which differs from the statute Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes , Minn. Stat. § 176.182, licensing agencies must withhold a business licence until evidence of workers’ compensation compliance is presented Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Washington State Legislature , RCW 18.27.040, surety bond of $30,000 general and $15,000 specialty, with the 2024 transition provision Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Washington State Legislature , RCW 18.27.050, insurance or financial responsibility figures, unchanged since 2001, and the assigned-account alternative Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Washington State Legislature , RCW 18.27.030, registration application must carry evidence of workers’ compensation coverage Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Washington State Dept of Labor & Industries , News release 24-13, 1 July 2024, bond increase from $12,000 and $6,000, first rise since 2001, phased in at renewal Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- City of San Antonio Development Services , Home Improvement Contractor Registration Application, $300,000 per occurrence, $600,000 aggregate, $300,000 products and completed operations, city named as certificate holder Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- City of San Antonio Development Services , Residential Building Contractor Registration Application, $500,000 per occurrence, $1,000,000 aggregate, $500,000 products and completed operations Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- City and County of Denver , 2022 Denver Building and Fire Code, Administration, Section 126.1 contractor responsibilities and Section 126.4 demolition and moving liability insurance Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Denver Community Planning and Development , Contractor License Application, document checklist requesting no certificate of insurance and no bond Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- City of Dallas , Dallas City Code Chapter 52, Subchapter 11, Section 1103.1 enumerating the required contents of a contractor registration application Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- City of Austin Development Services , Contractor Registration, mechanical, electrical and plumbing trades only; roofing does not register Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- City of Austin Development Services , Work Exempt from Building Permits, asphalt shingle replacement exemption outside the Wildland-Urban Interface Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Texas Legislature , Tex. Lab. Code ch. 406, § 406.002 coverage generally elective, § 406.004 notice to the division, § 406.005 notice to employees, § 406.033 defences unavailable to a non-subscriber Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Texas Dept of Insurance, Division of Workers’ Compensation , Coverage verification and history, elective for private employers, and TDI’s own statement that Texas is the only such state Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Florida Legislature , Fla. Stat. § 440.02, (20)(b)2 construction industry one-or-more-employee threshold against four for other private employment; (10) definition of construction industry Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Tennessee Bureau of Workers’ Compensation , Construction: one or more employees requires coverage, against a five-employee threshold for other industries Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Colorado Dept of Labor and Employment , Workers’ compensation insurance requirements: one or more employees, including part-time and family members Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes , Minn. Stat. § 60A.39, certificates of insurance convey no contractual rights, required disclaimer, and the cancellation-notice limit Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Texas Legislature , Tex. Ins. Code ch. 1811, § 1811.051 certificates may not convey contractual rights; § 1811.101 "for information purposes only" Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- New York State Dept of Financial Services , Office of General Counsel Opinion 11-01-08: a certificate cannot confer rights beyond the referenced policy Retrieved 3 September 2026.
- Houston Permitting Center , Residential Roofing Permit, HTTP 403 on automated retrieval; Houston recorded as unverified and omitted Retrieved 3 September 2026.
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HyreRoof does not perform roofing work, does not sell insurance, and has no commercial relationship with any insurer, licensing authority or contractor named on this page. This is general information and not legal or insurance advice. If a figure here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will fix it in place and note the correction.