There is one question that tells you more about a building contractor than almost anything else you can ask, and most homeowners never ask it.
Not what it costs. Not how long it will take. Whether they are insured, and what happens when you ask them to prove it.
It is a revealing question precisely because nothing forces a good answer. No law in South Africa requires a building contractor to carry Contractors All Risks cover. NHBRC registration does not require it. No public register lists who carries it and who does not. It is a cost a business takes on voluntarily, month after month, for something most clients never ask about and that ideally never gets used.
Which is exactly why the answer is worth listening to.
What carrying cover says about a contractor
A builder who carries CAR cover did several things before they ever met you. They sat down with a broker and described their business honestly. They worked through what could realistically go wrong on a site and what it would cost to put right. Then they decided to carry that cost themselves rather than hope it never happens.
None of that appears on a quote. But it is the same habit of mind that produces a properly scoped job, a timeline that accounts for what might delay it, and a snag list that actually gets closed out. Businesses tend to be consistent. The one that has thought carefully about what could go wrong is usually the one that has thought carefully about sequencing, materials and site protection too.
The reverse deserves a fair hearing. A contractor without cover is not automatically reckless, and plenty of capable tradespeople work without it, particularly on smaller jobs. But a decision has still been made about who carries the risk on your project, and the answer is you. You should know that going in rather than discovering it afterwards.
There is also the matter of how the question gets answered. A contractor who carries cover can send you the schedule the same day, because it is a document sitting in their email. A vague reassurance, a change of subject, or a promise to find it later is itself a piece of information.
What your home insurance stops covering the day work starts
Most homeowners assume their household policy carries them through a renovation. It generally does not, and the wording is rarely ambiguous once you go and read it.
Household cover is written for a house being lived in. Once a property becomes a building site, with a structure opened up, materials stacked in the driveway and people working on it daily, insurers commonly treat that as a materially different risk. Many policies exclude damage arising from alterations or construction outright. Some suspend cover on the parts of the building being worked on. Others require you to notify them before work begins, and quietly reduce what they will pay if you did not.
None of this is a trap. It is simply that the risk changed and the policy was not written for the new one.
So the question is not whether you are insured. It is who is carrying the risk during the weeks your house is open.
What Contractors All Risks cover actually does
Contractors All Risks, usually shortened to CAR, is the policy built for exactly this window. It sits alongside your household cover rather than replacing it, and it typically responds to three separate things.
- The works themselves. The half-built extension, the newly plastered walls, the roof that is off. If a storm comes through before the structure is closed up, that damage falls somewhere.
- Materials and equipment on site. Tiles, timber, sanitaryware and tools stacked on your property, which are a well known target.
- Damage or injury to other people and their property. This is the public liability leg, and it is the one homeowners think about least and should think about most.
Three things that go wrong, and who pays
These are ordinary events, not disasters. They happen on normal jobs.
A wall comes down badly and takes out your neighbour’s boundary and their plumbing. Your neighbour has a claim. Against whom depends entirely on who was negligent and who is covered. If the contractor has no public liability cover and no money, your neighbour will look at you, because it is your property and your project.
A pipe is cut during first fix and floods the room above the new kitchen. If the contractor is uninsured, the repair comes out of somebody’s pocket. Usually it comes out of the contract, which means the job stalls while the argument runs.
Someone working on your property is injured. This is a different policy again. COIDA, the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, is what covers workers for injury on duty, and a contractor should be able to hand you a valid Letter of Good Standing. It is not the same thing as CAR cover and neither substitutes for the other.
In every one of these, the uninsured outcome is the same in shape. The money has to come from somewhere, and where it comes from gets decided slowly, expensively, and while your project sits still.
What to ask, and what to ask to see
Four questions, and you should ask them of every contractor quoting, including us.
- Do you carry Contractors All Risks cover, and can I see the schedule? A schedule is a document, not an opinion. Ask for it in writing.
- Is the policy current? Check the period of insurance on the schedule. Some policies renew monthly, so a document from four months ago does not prove cover today.
- What are the limits? Cover is not unlimited. Ask what the contract works limit is and whether your project sits comfortably inside it.
- Can I see a valid COIDA Letter of Good Standing? Separate question, separate document, and it has an expiry date on it.
You are not being difficult. You are asking a supplier to evidence something they are implicitly claiming, which is ordinary in every other industry you deal with.
What this does not mean
Insurance is not a quality guarantee, and it would be dishonest to sell it as one. A fully insured contractor can still run a badly managed site, miss timelines and leave you with a snag list. Cover tells you what happens when something goes wrong. It tells you nothing about how likely that is, or whether the work will be any good.
It is one signal among several. The scope, the references, the site you are shown, the way questions get answered, all of it counts. Cover simply happens to be one of the few signals that comes with a document attached, which makes it easier to verify than most.
Where we stand
We carry Contractors All Risks cover, and we will send you the schedule if you ask for it. We also hold a valid COIDA Letter of Good Standing, so the people working on your property are covered for injury on duty.
We would rather you asked us for both, and asked everyone else quoting for the same. If one contractor sends the documents that afternoon and another never quite gets round to it, you have learned something useful about how each of them runs a business.