Deer Park, NY
Client portal coming soon
Our online client portal is on the way. In the meantime, our team is happy to help — just reach out.
Contact us
Four trades, four completely different claim files. The electrician’s work causes fires; the plumber’s causes water damage; the HVAC contractor’s causes both plus a carbon monoxide risk; and the roofer works where New York’s Labor Law makes a fall nearly indefensible.
A technology consultant’s program is built on combined technology E&O and cyber liability — one form covering both failure to perform and security failure, because clients rarely plead only one. The provisions that decide real outcomes: whether contractual liability is covered (your SLAs and uplift obligations often aren’t), whether your work on client systems is covered when their network is breached, and — for MSPs — whether the policy contemplates aggregation across your entire client base. Add first-party cyber for your own ransomware and interruption, and New York’s mandatory workers’ comp, DBL, and Paid Family Leave.
Faulty wiring and connections cause fires that surface months later — the classic long-tail completed-operations claim. Arc flash and energized work drive severe injuries, and service upgrades in older housing stock raise both the fire risk and the code exposure.
Water damage is the most frequent claim in the trades — a failed connection above a finished ceiling costs far more than the fitting. Soldering and brazing add hot-work fire exposure, HVAC adds refrigerant handling and rooftop work, and combustion equipment adds carbon monoxide risk with severe consequences.
The hardest class in construction to place. Work at height means Labor Law exposure with limited defenses, torch-down and hot work create fires, and an open roof at the wrong moment produces water damage to everything below. Expect fewer carriers, higher rates, and closer underwriting.
Trades expand into each other constantly — the plumber who adds heating, the electrician who takes on solar, the HVAC contractor who starts doing roof-mounted work. Each move changes classification, and a claim arising from undeclared work is where a policy stops responding.
Your work causes damage after you leave. Completed operations is the defining coverage: the fire traced to a connection, the leak behind a wall, the failed rooftop flashing. Claims surface months or years later, which means coverage must be continuous — and a lapse between policies can leave finished work uninsured.
Water is frequency; fire is severity. Plumbing and HVAC failures produce constant, moderate claims that compound into a bad loss ratio. Electrical and hot-work fires produce fewer claims with far larger numbers. Both respond to documented procedure — pressure testing and shutoff protocol on one side, hot work permits and fire watch on the other.
Height changes everything in New York. Labor Law sections 240 and 241 impose near-absolute liability for gravity-related injuries, and roofers, HVAC crews on rooftops, and electricians on lifts all live inside that exposure. It drives umbrella requirements, carrier appetite, and the employer’s liability limit you need behind an action-over claim.
Action-over claims land back on your policy. Your injured employee collects comp, sues the GC or owner, and the contract sends the claim back to you. Employer’s liability exclusions on the GL form are what make this uninsured — a provision to check before binding, not after the tender arrives.
Hot work is a program, not a task. Torches, soldering, welding, and cutting cause fires that start hours after the crew leaves. Carriers ask for hot work permits, fire watch periods, and extinguisher protocol, and pricing reflects whether the answer is a program or a shrug.
Tools and materials are constantly at risk. Vans get broken into, job-site material walks, and equipment travels daily. Contractor’s equipment coverage and an installation floater for materials delivered but not yet installed are working policies in these trades.
Emergency and service work is 24/7 driving. Service trucks running calls at night and in weather produce auto claims, and the technician driving to an emergency is a different risk than a scheduled crew. MVRs and a driving policy are cheap relative to the exposure.
The core policy — rated by trade classification and receipts, with completed operations carried continuously because that’s when your claims appear.
Workers’ compensation at trade rates, with the employer’s liability limit raised to stand behind action-over exposure — plus New York’s DBL and Paid Family Leave.
Service trucks, vans, and trailers, with hired & non-owned for personal vehicles used on calls, and MVR discipline behind both.
Tools, equipment, and materials delivered but not yet installed — the property that no building policy covers and every crew depends on.
Explicit coverage for the employee-injury claim that returns through the owner or GC — essential in New York, excluded on more forms than contractors expect.
Blanket AI ongoing and completed operations, primary and non-contributory, and waiver of subrogation — required by every GC you work for.
Contracts demand it and Labor Law severity justifies it; roofers and height-exposed trades should expect both higher requirements and higher pricing.
Refrigerants, fuel, sewage backups, asbestos and lead disturbance in older buildings, and mold following water losses — commonly excluded from GL and addressed by contractors pollution.
Shop, yard, parts inventory, and office contents — plus business income for a service business that dispatches from somewhere.
Design-build, load calculations, and system engineering create advice exposure that a GL policy doesn’t reach.
Field crews, apprentices, overtime and prevailing wage on public work — an employment file most trade contractors underestimate.
Performance and payment bonds for public and larger private work, underwritten on financials and backlog rather than on loss history.
Roofing rates a multiple of interior electrical or plumbing service work. Height, hot work, and energized work all move the number, and classification disputes at audit are expensive.
GL on receipts or payroll, comp on payroll by class, and subcontracted cost charged to you unless certificates prove otherwise — the file with direct premium consequences.
Service and repair work rates differently than new construction, and residential differently than commercial — with occupied-building work carrying its own water and fire damage profile.
How high crews work, whether harnesses and anchorages are used, and whether training is documented — the questions that decide appetite in roofing and rooftop trades.
Permit systems, fire watch, extinguisher placement, and shutoff and pressure-test procedures — carriers credit documented programs and price the absence of them.
Five years of claims plus the mod. In high-rate trades the mod is worth real money, and return-to-work programs move it faster than anything else available.
Directionally: electrical and plumbing service contractors often find competitive general liability in the four figures, HVAC lands nearby with refrigerant and rooftop considerations, and roofing prices in its own market entirely — frequently multiples of the other three, with fewer carriers willing to quote. Workers’ comp at trade rates and New York umbrella limits typically exceed the GL premium in all four trades.
The two claims that define these trades: the fall from height in New York — where Labor Law leaves owners and general contractors with limited defenses, the claim travels down the contract chain to the trade that signed the indemnity, and the umbrella layer is what stands between the business and the verdict; and the completed-operations loss that surfaces later — the fire traced to a connection, the leak behind a finished wall, the roof that failed in the first serious storm — where the only question that matters is whether coverage was continuous from the day the work was done. One is managed with fall protection and honest limits; the other with never letting a policy lapse.
A Long Island perspective: Long Island’s housing stock is old enough that service and replacement work dominates: panel upgrades in homes built for a fraction of today’s electrical load, repiping, boiler and HVAC replacements, and roofs that meet coastal weather every winter. That mix concentrates the exposures — occupied-building water damage, fires in older wiring, asbestos and lead disturbance in mid-century homes, and roofing crews working through a compressed season. New York’s Labor Law applies to all of it, and the GCs and homeowners’ associations these trades work for know exactly what certificates to demand.
Why specialty trades work with GCI: these four trades are underwritten as four different businesses, and the carriers that want one often decline another — roofing in particular is a specialty placement. As an independent brokerage, Group Coverage, Inc. classifies the work honestly to the markets that will write it, confirms action-over and completed-operations language rather than assuming it, sizes employer’s liability and umbrella limits to New York’s Labor Law reality, and coordinates the employer stack — with benefits, our founding practice, quoted alongside.
For the safety and regulatory side, see OSHA on construction and fall protection, the New York State Department of Labor, and the Insurance Information Institute on business coverage basics.
It needs to be — trade claims arrive long after the invoice clears. Group Coverage, Inc. builds trade programs around what your crews actually do: the heights, the hot work, the water risk, the trucks — then places them with the carriers that want the class, sizes limits to New York’s Labor Law reality, and coordinates the employer stack.
This page is for general educational purposes and is not legal advice. Coverage terms, classifications, exclusions, and pricing factors vary by carrier, operations, and jurisdiction, and statutory and regulatory requirements vary by state and change over time. Review your specific policy documents, or speak with a licensed advisor, to understand how these concepts apply to your business.
© 2026 Group Coverage, Inc. All rights reserved.
