Why Contractors Choice Agency Built This Resource

From the Jobsite to the Agency Side

Josh Cotner started in construction, not insurance. Before he founded Contractors Choice Agency, he worked as a contractor — which means the subcontract paperwork covered on this site isn't theoretical to him. He's been the one signing a hold-harmless clause without fully knowing what it committed him to, and he's been the one waiting on a certificate of insurance that turned out not to be worth the paper it was printed on.

Today, Contractors Choice Agency is a commercial insurance agency serving more than 50 contractor trades nationwide — licensed to write coverage in all 50 states, built specifically around how contractors actually run their businesses rather than a generic small-business insurance template.

Why a Site About Indemnity Agreements

Running an insurance agency for contractors means seeing the same pattern play out again and again: a general contractor has an indemnity clause in their subcontract, feels covered because of it, and doesn't realize the clause was never backed by the additional insured status, the waiver of subrogation, or the active certificate of insurance it depended on. The contract language was fine. The insurance behind it wasn't there, wasn't current, or wasn't verified — and nobody found out until a claim came in.

That gap is what this site is built to close. Not by replacing a construction attorney — the legal drafting and review of indemnity language genuinely needs a licensed attorney's judgment, and every guide on this site says so plainly. What we can offer is the insurance side of the picture: what additional insured status actually does, how a waiver of subrogation works, what a real certificate of insurance tracking process looks like, and how all of it needs to line up with the contract language your attorney drafts.

What This Site Is — and Isn't

This is an educational resource, not a law firm and not a document mill. You won't find downloadable fill-in-the-blank indemnity templates here — see Sample Indemnity Agreement Language for why we deliberately don't offer that. You also won't find a hard insurance-quote push on every page. What you will find is a straightforward explanation of how indemnity agreements, additional insured endorsements, waivers of subrogation, and certificate of insurance tracking fit together as one system — written for a contractor running a business, not for another attorney.

How This Site Gets Built and Kept Current

Every guide on this site starts from real search data on what GCs are actually trying to figure out — not guesswork about what sounds important. Where a topic touches contract law, like which indemnity form is enforceable in a given state, the content says plainly that it's general information and points the reader to a construction attorney rather than pretending to answer a legal question we're not licensed to answer. Where a topic touches insurance — additional insured endorsements, waiver of subrogation, certificate of insurance tracking — that's the ground CCA actually stands on, built from years of underwriting and servicing contractor policies, not secondhand research.