Business insurance built for your industry

Two businesses can buy policies with the same name and need completely different cover. General liability for an accountant is mostly about a client tripping in the office. For a roofer, it's about a dropped tool, a fire started by a torch, and a leak discovered two years after the job. Same policy, different risk, different price.

Underwriters start every quote by classifying what you do. That classification decides which insurers will quote, which exclusions apply, what the policy is rated on, and which extra coverages you'll be asked about. Getting it right is the single most important step in buying business insurance. Describing your operation accurately also protects you at claim time, because a misdescribed business can find a claim disputed.

Each sector has a full guide covering its exposures, mandatory cover, contract terms and costs.

In many professions, insurance is a condition of practising, set by statute, regulation or a professional body. These are some of the rules our profession guides set out, mostly for Ontario. Requirements differ by province, so check with your regulator.

Health practitioners face college requirements too; see malpractice insurance. Where no regulator sets a minimum, your contracts usually do.

In most industries, the toughest insurance requirements are written into contracts. Construction is the clearest example: the CCDC 41 insurance requirements, used with standard Canadian construction contracts, call for $10,000,000 of general liability per occurrence, among other cover. Commercial leases, client service agreements, shipper contracts and government tenders all set their own limits and additional insured terms.

Read the insurance clause before you sign and send it to your broker. A certificate of insurance proves you meet it, and our guide to commercial lease insurance clauses shows how to read the wording.

Every sector has its own legal rules that shape what can go wrong and what insurance has to respond to. A few examples from our guides:

An industry package bundles the coverages a typical business in your sector needs, usually at a better price than buying each line separately. It's the right starting point for most small and mid-sized businesses.

Customize when your operation doesn't fit the typical profile: unusual work, U.S. exposure, high-value contracts, several locations, or a regulator or client with specific limits. Most programs we build start from a package and adjust the limits, endorsements and specialist lines from there. See small business insurance for how packages are structured.

Every insurer has an appetite: the classes of business it wants to write, the ones it writes carefully, and the ones it avoids. A class one insurer declines, another may target. Roofing, trucking, student housing and bars are common examples of classes where appetite varies sharply between markets.

That's the main argument for an independent broker in specialist industries. We compare our panel of 17 insurers and know which ones want your class, so a decline from one market doesn't leave you without cover. See how comparing quotes works.

Each industry is rated on the measure that best tracks its risk. Liability is often rated on revenue or payroll, property on values and construction, auto on vehicles and drivers, and professional liability on fees and the type of work. Your claims history and the controls you can document move the price within your class.

Market conditions matter too. Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index put Canadian commercial insurance rates down 6% in the third quarter of 2026, so this is a good time to review limits and gaps. Each industry guide has a cost section explaining its own rating factors.