Your Contractor Renewal Just Jumped. Here’s What to Do Before You Sign

You opened the renewal, looked at the new premium, and it is not what you expected. Maybe it is fifteen percent higher than last year. Maybe it is forty. Maybe the carrier is non-renewing the policy entirely, or the limits you need for an upcoming job are not on the table.

Before you sign, or panic, or move to whichever direct writer has been emailing you, it is worth understanding what is actually happening and what your real options are. A higher renewal is not always a fair renewal, and a non-renewal is rarely the last word.

Why This Is Happening

Insurance carriers do not stay in the same lane forever. Every year, each company quietly adjusts what kinds of business it wants to write, how much of it, and at what price. That is called appetite, and it shifts for a handful of reasons.

A carrier may have taken too many losses in a particular trade or region and decided to pull back. A national catastrophe in another state can change pricing for everyone, including contractors in Maine who have nothing to do with it. Reinsurance costs may have climbed, which gets passed down. The company may have set a growth target in another line and stopped focusing on small commercial. Or the carrier may have simply changed its mind about a class of risk that used to be fine.

Most of these decisions happen quietly, in underwriting offices the contractor never sees. The contractor just sees the number on the renewal.

Why It Often Comes Down to the Trade

Carriers also look at contractors by trade, and appetite varies a lot from one trade to the next. A general remodeler does not look the same to an underwriter as a roofer. A residential electrician does not look the same as a coastal contractor working on waterfront homes. A small drywall crew does not look the same as a paving contractor.

A carrier that is comfortable with one of those trades may be tightening on another. Your work has not changed. The carrier’s view of it has. That is how a contractor who has done the same work for fifteen years can suddenly find that the company holding the policy no longer wants to.

Three Reactions to Avoid Before You Sign

When the renewal lands, contractors tend to do one of three things, and each one has a cost.

The first is to just sign and absorb it. Sometimes the new number is fair, but often it reflects one carrier’s view of the risk and is not what another carrier would have offered for the same work.

The second is to grab a quick online quote from a national company or a direct writer. Those quotes are written off basic information, and trade businesses do not fit basic information well. The price may look better at first, then turn out to exclude the work you actually do, limit subcontractor coverage, or fail to meet the certificates your GCs are asking for.

The third is to drop or reduce coverage to keep the premium down. That works until the moment it doesn’t, and the moment it doesn’t is usually expensive.

What to Do Instead

Before signing the renewal, put the policy in front of the market rather than reacting to one company’s decision in isolation. Other carriers have different appetites, and trade business that does not fit one underwriter often fits another cleanly. The same policy that drew a forty percent increase at one carrier can come in below last year’s number at another. You do not know until it is shopped.

That is the move worth making before the new premium is locked in.

How Our Commercial Team Approaches It

When a contractor brings their renewal to Rousseau, the work happens on the commercial side of our agency, led by Emily Pelletier, Principal and Vice President of Commercial Lines. Emily also serves on Liberty Mutual’s Agent Advisory Council, which means our team is part of the conversations carriers are having about where the market is going for trade business, not just reacting to those decisions after the fact.

Rousseau works with multiple commercial carriers, which lets us shop a policy across companies with different appetites for different trades. A roofer who does not fit one carrier may fit another cleanly. A coastal contractor a national company will not touch is often standard business for a regional carrier we already write with. That access is what makes carrier flexibility real instead of theoretical.

Our agency was recently named a recipient of the 2026 Liberty Mutual President’s Award for Commercial Lines, recognition tied to the work our commercial team does every day with business owners across York County, Cumberland County, and the rest of Southern Maine. It reflects 13 years of working closely with one of our top carrier partners, and the kind of underwriting relationships that produce smoother placement and better-fitted coverage for the contractors we serve.

What That Looks Like in Practice

A first conversation is short and concrete. We listen to what changed, what the renewal looks like, what the GC is asking for, and what the work actually looks like today. From there, our team puts the policy in front of carriers whose appetite fits the trade, comes back with real options rather than a single verdict, and handles the certificates so the next job is not waiting on paperwork. As the business grows, the conversation continues. New crews, new equipment, new project types, all change how coverage should respond. We review it instead of assuming last year’s policy still fits. Reviewed, not assumed.

Before You Sign, Let Us Take a Look

If your renewal just jumped, your carrier is walking away, or a job is asking for limits your current policy will not produce, the time to have the conversation is before the new policy is in force, not after.

Call our office at 207.282.7568 or email info@rousseauinsurance.com, and we will walk through your options together.