Co-Employment Risk

The agreement says independent contractor.Your operating model has to support it.

1099Policy turns contractor-maintained insurance into an assignment-level control — bound to the engagement window, verified before work starts, and kept as a record you can export.

Get a coverage gap check →See the workflow
Assignment-level rulesIn-name coverageNothing to renewExportable history
Assignment coverage record● VERIFIED
Contractor
Dana Whitfieldcn_8ZK2Q · enrolled once, 14 Feb
Assignment
Field survey · Austin, TX3 Mar – 28 Jun · asg_4A91
Required
General liability 1M / 2M · Workers' comp statutoryApplied from your rule set for TX field work
Named insured
Dana WhitfieldThe contractor's own policy — not your entity
Additional insured
Northwind Logistics, Inc.
Coverage window
3 Mar – 28 JunBound to the assignment. Nothing to renew.
Status
Verified 2 Mar, 09:14Certificate on file before day one
Retained after the assignment closesExportable

What this is and isn't. We don't determine whether a worker is properly classified, and no insurance product can. We make one requirement in your programme enforceable, and we keep the evidence that it was.

The control gap

A written requirement is not an operating control.

Your contractor agreement already requires insurance. Almost every enterprise agreement does. The exposure isn't in the clause — it's in the distance between writing it once and enforcing it a thousand times.

Where it's written

One insurance clause in the master agreement, negotiated once by people who will not see it again.

Where it has to hold

Every assignment, every extension, every exception, across business units and hiring managers who never read the clause.

Where it gets proven

Under audit, or after a claim, from whatever survived in an inbox two reorganisations ago.

How it runs

From assignment created to coverage verified.

The same five steps every time, whether the assignment starts in your VMS, your procurement system, or the dashboard.

Assignment created

Your coverage rules apply automatically based on work type, state, and what the client contract requires. Triggered from your VMS, ATS, or procurement system through the API, or created directly in the dashboard.

API · dashboard · webhook

Contractor routed

They either produce coverage they already hold, which is parsed and scored against your rules, or they enrol and bind coverage scoped to this assignment. Enrolment is a one-time step of under a minute, and it carries across every future assignment.

Bring your own · or bind in-name

Coverage verified

Named insured, limits, additional-insured wording, and dates are checked against the requirement you set. Dates are checked against the assignment end date rather than against today — an annual policy that expires six weeks into a four-month assignment passes a human glance and fails this check.

ACORD 25, 27, 28, 30 + broker variants

Gaps surfaced

Two things land in the queue: assignments where the contractor hasn't yet bound coverage, and third-party certificates that fail the check — wrong named insured, limits under your minimum, or an expiry date that falls before the assignment ends. The contractor is notified directly so they can resolve it without your team chasing.

Slack · email · webhook

Record retained

Every policy, certificate, verification result, and exception stays attached to the contractor and the assignment, and stays after the assignment closes. When an auditor or opposing counsel asks what was required and when, you export it rather than rebuild it.

Per contractor · per assignment · per date

Two things worth being plain about. Coverage we issue binds to the assignment window, so there is no renewal cycle and nothing that can lapse halfway through — an extension is a new assignment with its own coverage. And we surface status, we don't gate work: your VMS or procurement system decides whether an assignment can start, and we give it a verified answer to decide on.

Two readers, one control

Legal defines the requirement. The programme has to run it.

The same control produces a different deliverable depending on who is asking for it.

General Counsel

A requirement you can show was actually enforced.

  • Assignment-level evidence, not a folder of contractor PDFs
  • A record of what was required, and when it was satisfied
  • Every assignment evidenced the same way, including the ones nobody chased
  • Exceptions and overrides documented with an owner and a reason
  • Explicit limits on what the product does and does not determine
Head of Contingent Labour

A requirement that doesn't slow down every start.

  • One queue for unbound assignments and failed certificates
  • Contractors remediate themselves rather than waiting on your team
  • No certificate chasing by email
  • The same rules applied across business units and systems
  • A live view of the roster instead of a quarterly spreadsheet
Trusted by

The teams that staff, dispatch, and pay contractors.

Wieden+Kennedy
BBDO
DDB
Golin Ketchum
Octagon
CreatorIQ
Why it matters

The risk lives in the operating facts, not the contract label.

Co-employment turns on how the relationship actually runs, which is why a clean classification audit doesn't settle it. The tests differ by statute and jurisdiction, and the federal framework is itself in flux — but the operating facts they examine are broadly consistent.

Direction and control

Who assigns daily tasks, sets working hours, and reviews the output.

Duration and integration

How long the engagement has run, and whether the contractor now has a badge, an email address, and a seat on the org chart.

Financial control

Who bears business expense, supplies tools, and carries an opportunity for profit or loss.

Performance management

Whether coaching, improvement plans, and discipline run through you or through the contractor's own business.

Independent business

Whether the contractor demonstrably operates as one — including carrying insurance in their own name.

Where we fit, precisely. Insurance does not determine classification, and it is not a co-employment control. Joint-employer analysis turns on control, and no policy changes who directs the work. Coverage in the contractor's own name is one operating fact among several — and it happens to be the only one on this list that can be governed consistently instead of living in email. The rest is your operating model.

Choosing a model

Different operating models solve different problems.

This page assumes you have already decided that direct contractor engagement is appropriate for this population. If you haven't, the honest answer may be a different row.

ModelWho contracts the workerWho directs the workWho carries insuranceBest suited when
Direct 1099 engagementYou contract the worker directlyShould be the contractorThe contractor, if you require and verify itThe work is genuinely independent and scoped
Staffing supplier or MSPThe agency employs or contracts themContested in practiceThe agencyYou need volume and can accept supplier margin
Employer of recordThe EOR is the legal employerYou, in practiceThe EORThe worker should be an employee, often cross-border
Direct employmentYou employ themYouYouThe role is ongoing and core to the business

1099Policy operates inside the first row. It does not move you between rows, and it isn't an argument that the others are too expensive — they change the relationship, which is sometimes exactly what you need. If you're weighing the second and third rows seriously, the EOR comparison is the better page.

The question that matters

Can you show who had valid coverage on every day work was performed?

Not how many contractors you engage. Whether the evidence exists, per person, per assignment, per date — going backwards as well as forwards.

600
25%
20%
Legal sees the record. Whether the first two numbers can be evidenced historically.
Operations sees the queue. The third number is work to be done today.
Contractor assignments600
With no evidence of coverage150
Still running work, unresolved30

If you can't fill these in confidently, that's the finding. Send us the assignment list and we'll produce the real numbers.

In practice

The same assignment, with and without a working control.

A specialist on a scope that keeps extending. Nothing unusual happens until something does — and then the difference is entirely in what you can produce.

MomentWithout a working controlWith 1099Policy
Assignment beginsCertificate requested by email. Work starts while it's chased.Requirement applied from your rules. Coverage bound to the assignment window before day one.
The contractor has no certificateThe row stays empty, or someone quietly waives it.They enrol once and coverage issues in their name, scoped to this assignment.
The contractor brings their own policySomeone eyeballs a PDF and files it.Parsed and scored against your rules — including whether it actually runs past the assignment end date.
The scope extendsNobody revisits anything, because nobody thinks it changed.The extension is a new assignment with its own bound coverage. Nothing carries forward silently.
A requirement is waivedThe approval lives in a Slack thread.Exception recorded with owner, reason, and date.
An injury or audit happensThe team reconstructs two years of history from email.The assignment record exports as a set.

General information, not legal advice. Co-employment and classification analysis are fact-specific and vary by jurisdiction. Federal independent-contractor and joint-employment standards were the subject of proposed rulemaking in 2026 and may change.

FAQ

Questions Legal and programme owners ask first.

No, and anyone telling you otherwise is overselling. Classification is decided on the whole relationship — behavioural control, financial control, and the nature of the parties' arrangement — and no single fact settles it. Coverage in the contractor's own name is one supporting indicium of an independently established business, which is a real but minor input to that analysis. It is not proof, and it is not a substitute for the test.

No. We don't assess classification and we don't offer a legal opinion on it. What we do is take one requirement your programme has already decided on — that contractors carry their own coverage — and make it something you can apply, monitor, and evidence consistently across every assignment. The classification decision stays with you and your counsel.

Not directly, and we would rather say so plainly. Joint-employer analysis turns on control — who assigns the work, sets the hours, supervises, manages performance — and no insurance policy changes any of that. What coverage in the contractor's own name does is change the consequence. Your policy is no longer the one responding to their injury, which closes the statutory uninsured-subcontractor exposure most state workers' compensation acts create, and removes the most common way the argument gets started in the first place.

They are separate tests that often run on the same facts. Misclassification asks whether a worker was labelled correctly — genuinely an independent contractor rather than an employee. Co-employment asks whether your organisation has taken on the employer's role alongside another party, and it turns almost entirely on control. A clean classification audit therefore does not settle co-employment exposure, and the two are worth keeping apart when deciding which controls actually help.

The policy is issued to the contractor as the named insured, in their own name or their business entity's, and the carrier holds it in their name. Claims pay out to them. Your entity is added as additional insured where the contract requires it. That is structurally the opposite of an employer-of-record arrangement, where the worker becomes someone's W-2 employee.

There's nothing to renew. Coverage binds to the assignment window, so it starts and ends with the work. If the scope extends, that's a new assignment and coverage binds to the new window — nothing carries forward silently, and there's no annual policy sitting behind it that could lapse halfway through an engagement. Premium follows the same logic: it's rated against the assignment rather than an annual estimate.

That's caught at verification rather than discovered later. When a contractor submits an existing certificate, the expiry date is checked against the assignment end date, not just against today — an annual policy that runs out six weeks into a four-month assignment passes a human glance and fails this check. It surfaces in the queue with the contractor notified, and they can either provide updated coverage or bind assignment-scoped coverage instead.

Yes. Required coverage lines, minimum limits, additional-insured wording, and waiver requirements are configured as rules and applied by work type, state, business unit, or client contract. Every incoming certificate is scored against the rule that applied to that assignment, and the rule version is part of the record.

Yes, and many do. They submit their existing certificate, it is parsed — ACORD 25, 27, 28, 30 and common broker variants — and checked against your requirements. If it passes, it's recorded against the assignment. If it fails, the reason is specific enough for them to take to their broker. Contractors who can't produce one can bind coverage scoped to the assignment instead, which is the gap that otherwise never closes.

As first-class records rather than as an absence. When a requirement is waived or reduced for a particular assignment, the exception is stored with who approved it, when, and why, attached to that assignment. It exports with everything else. This is usually the part that matters most in an audit, because it is the part that otherwise lives in a Slack thread.

It's designed to sit alongside them rather than replace them. Assignments can be created through the API from whatever system already owns them, and status flows back by webhook. We integrate directly with platforms including Worksuite and CreatorIQ. You can also start entirely in the dashboard and add the integration later.

For the 1099 population, yes, and suppliers don't need to change systems. Worth being clear about scope: if a worker is the staffing agency's W-2 employee, they already have an employer and coverage sits with the agency. This addresses contractors engaged as independent businesses, which is where the argument actually arises.

Either. Agency Remit means you are invoiced and remit on the contractor's behalf. Contractor Pay means the contractor pays by card when they opt in. Most enterprises start with Agency Remit because it removes any adoption question, and because it is a per-assignment cost rather than an annual premium, it scales with what you actually run.

They enrol once, which takes under a minute, and coverage binds from their next assignment onward. You don't have to pause work or re-onboard anyone. Long-tenure contractors are usually worth starting with, because they carry the most accumulated exposure and the least documentation.

Certificate chasing largely stops, because contractors are notified directly and remediate themselves. Instead of a periodic spreadsheet review, the team works one queue: assignments where coverage isn't bound yet, and third-party certificates that failed the check. Rules are set once rather than re-explained to each hiring manager. The gating factor on rollout is usually internal approval, not implementation.

Per contractor and per assignment: what was required, which rule version applied, what evidence was submitted, whether it passed, when it was verified, and every exception with its approver. It exports as a set rather than being reassembled from email, and it stays available after the assignment closes. That record is also what a workers' compensation premium auditor asks for when they review payments to contractors.

You manage the relationship. We make the insurance requirement enforceable.

Send us a sample of your contractor assignments. We'll show you which have no coverage evidence on file, which have expired, and which of those are still running work today. No deck, no discovery call first.