CT Home Care Agency Insurance Requirements

Connecticut legally requires two things before you can register a home care agency: a $10,000 surety bond and, once you have employees, workers' compensation insurance. General liability and professional liability aren't state-mandated, but no referral partner, insurance-based payer, or careful private-pay client will sign with an agency that doesn't carry them. Here's what's actually required by law, what's required in practice, and roughly what each one costs.

What CT Actually Requires by Law

Two coverages aren't optional if you want to operate a homemaker-companion agency in Connecticut.

• $10,000 surety bond — required under Connecticut General Statutes §20-672 to protect clients against employee theft. Most owners pay a flat annual premium of roughly $145 rather than the full bond amount; the exact rate depends on your credit.
• Workers' compensation insurance — mandatory for any Connecticut employer with employees, under the state's Workers' Compensation Act, with no minimum-employee threshold that exempts you. The Connecticut Insurance Department (CID) oversees the insurers who write these policies; the Workers' Compensation Commission (WCC) handles claims but doesn't sell or oversee the insurance itself.

What Clients and Referral Partners Expect

Beyond the two legally required coverages, two more are close to non-negotiable in practice, even though DCP doesn't require them on the application:

• General liability insurance — covers claims like a client injury in their home during a caregiver visit. Personal care aide businesses average about $365 a year for this coverage, typically with $1 million per-occurrence and $2 million aggregate limits.
• Professional liability insurance — covers claims tied to the care itself, such as an allegation of negligence. Non-medical home care businesses average about $139 a year, typically with $1 million per-occurrence and $3 million aggregate limits.

Hospitals, discharge planners, and Area Agencies on Aging routinely ask for proof of both before they'll refer clients to a new agency — treat this as a referral-relationship cost, not just a risk-management one.

How Coverage Needs Change As You Grow

A brand-new agency with two caregivers and a handful of private-pay clients has a different real risk profile than one with twenty caregivers, a second office, and a mix of private-pay and Medicaid-waiver clients — and your coverage should scale with it, not stay frozen at your launch-year policy.

Workers' compensation premiums move with your payroll automatically, since they're calculated off actual wages and a class code specific to home care work, so this one mostly takes care of itself as you hire. General liability and professional liability limits don't adjust automatically, though — a $1 million per-occurrence policy that felt generous with three clients can look thin once you're managing forty. Revisit your limits any time your caseload roughly doubles, and ask your broker specifically about an umbrella or excess liability policy once your payroll and caseload both grow past what felt like a startup scale.

If you add a second office location or start serving a new county, confirm with your insurer whether that changes your rating — some policies are written per location, and an unreported new office can create a coverage gap you don't discover until you actually need to file a claim.

Bundling Coverage vs. Buying Separately

Many small-business insurers offer a Business Owner's Policy (BOP) that bundles general liability with commercial property coverage, which can be worth asking about even for a home-based agency with minimal physical assets, since bundled pricing is often lower than buying each policy separately. Professional liability for home care is typically underwritten separately from a standard BOP, since it's a specialized healthcare-adjacent coverage — expect to shop that one with a broker who specifically writes policies for home care or personal-care-aide businesses rather than a generalist small-business insurer, since pricing and policy language both vary more than they do for general liability.

CT Home Care Agency Insurance Checklist

• $10,000 surety bond purchased and bond number ready for your HCA application
• Workers' compensation policy in place before your first employee's first shift
• General liability policy in place, with limits documented for referral partners
• Professional liability policy in place
• Certificates of insurance saved and ready to share with referral partners on request
• Renewal dates for all four calendared, alongside your Oct. 31 HCA renewal

Connecticut Resources for Home Care Agency Insurance

• Connecticut Insurance Department — workers' compensation insurer oversight (portal.ct.gov/CID)
• Connecticut Workers' Compensation Commission — claims process (portal.ct.gov/WCC)
• Connecticut General Statutes §20-672 — surety bond requirement

Read more: See Connecticut Homemaker-Companion Agency Registration: Full Walkthrough for how the bond fits into your overall application, and How Much Does It Cost to Start a Home Care Agency in Connecticut (Real Numbers) for how these premiums fit your first-year budget.

Not Sure Which Policies You Actually Need?

Every CT agency's insurance stack looks a little different depending on payer mix and staffing plans. Book a free Discovery Call and we'll walk through exactly what your specific agency needs before you buy anything.

INTERNAL PUBLISHING NOTES — NOT FOR PUBLICATION

• Facts verified live: CT DCP HCA page (bond requirement); CT Gen. Stat. §20-672; portal.ct.gov/wcc workers' comp requirement page; Insureon personal care aide insurance cost page (GL and professional liability averages).
• Workers' comp cost is genuinely variable by payroll/class code — intentionally not given a single dollar figure, consistent with guideline rule against inventing numbers.
• 'How Coverage Needs Change As You Grow' and 'Bundling Coverage' sections are general small-business-insurance practice, not CT-specific sourced claims — framed as guidance, not stated as regulatory fact. Flag for Dee to confirm against her own broker relationship if she wants a named provider referenced.
• No fabricated statistics or dollar figures used.