By Samantha Wright
Regardless of the safety protocols that may be in place, construction and contracting businesses know that accidents happen all the time. Contractors face daily risks ranging from operating potentially dangerous industrial machinery, to exposure to potentially hazardous materials, to the toll of repetitive motion injuries.
Workers' Compensation Insurance helps offset these risks by providing coverage to protect construction and contracting business assets in the event of a costly lawsuit brought by an injured or ill employee or subcontractor, while providing lost wages and medical benefits to workers that are injured on the job.
Texas Mutual is the largest writer of workers’ comp insurance in Texas, serving roughly 40 percent of the market in every class of business imaginable – including contractors of all kinds and every premium size – as well as offering several safety groups set up for different types of contractors based on association endorsements.
“It’s a very large market, and we are very dedicated to contractors,” said Lentz.
Lentz’ job is made more challenging by the fact that workers’ comp coverage is not mandated by the State of Texas, but he said, it is still highly advisable for contractors to carry it. Indeed, contractors in many segments of the construction and energy industries don’t have a choice – project owners or general contractors frequently insist that their subcontractors carry it.
Those who are most prone to not purchasing the coverage are smaller risks not affected by those requirements, such as residential contractors.
Lentz has observed that the appetite among all sorts of contractors for workers’ comp and other insurance coverages is growing now as construction business continues to recover after the economic downturn.
And Texas is where a lot of that growth is happening. A snapshot of the top five markets ranked by survey respondents in a recent Urban Land Institute survey found three of the nation’s top five real estate markets to be in the Lone Star State – Houston, Austin and Dallas/Fort Worth. (Denver and San Francisco also made the list.)
“The economy is definitely moving the contracting world in the right direction,” Lentz observed. The main challenge, he said, is “making sure we are doing a good job differentiating what our clients’ needs are, and approaching them in a way that will help them as a company and help their employees.”
