Moon Insurance Managers, Inc. · TDI license #5595
Commercial Insurance in Houston, TX
Most businesses end up assembling cover from a short list: something for the premises, something for the people, something for the vehicles, something for the liability — and then the one or two specialty lines a trade, a lease or a contract insists on.
Moon Insurance is an independent agency on FM 1959, working with Houston businesses since 1985. We quote across that whole list, and the certificates come from the same desk afterward. If you already know which line you need, start there. If you do not, that is what the phone is for.
Start here
What a business actually ends up carrying
Four decisions cover most of it, and each one has a boundary that catches people out.
The building and what stops if you lose it. A commercial property policy pays for the damage. It does not pay the rent, the payroll or the profit while the doors are shut — that is business income, and it is bought as part of the property policy rather than instead of it. If your business could not trade from a second location tomorrow, the second half matters more than the first.
The liability, and which kind. General liability answers for someone getting hurt or something getting broken. It does not answer for advice, design or a professional service going wrong — that is professional liability, and the gap between the two is the most common uninsured loss on this list. If a trade or a jobsite is involved, the liability conversation starts at contractors’ general liability instead, because the underwriting questions are different ones.
The people. Texas does not require most private employers to carry workers’ compensation. That is genuinely optional here and almost nowhere else, and it is a decision with consequences either way rather than a box to tick. Contracts and public projects frequently require it regardless of what the statute says.
The vehicles. If the business owns them, that is commercial auto. If staff run errands in their own cars, a personal policy is doing work the business is relying on, and the fix is an endorsement rather than a new policy.
A smaller operation can often buy the first two together in a business owner’s package, which is a packaging decision made by the carrier’s eligibility rules, not by you. Whether you qualify is worth asking early, because it changes what the rest of the list costs to assemble.
Premises & property
Liability
- General liability insurance The policy your lease or client asked for
- Contractors general liability insurance For the trades, certificates included
- Professional liability (errors and omissions) The work itself, not the premises
- Product liability insurance What you make or sell
- Liquor liability insurance If you serve alcohol
- Cyber liability insurance Breaches and the bill that follows
- Directors and officers liability insurance Decisions made at the top
- Commercial umbrella insurance Limits above the policies underneath
Industries & situations
- Restaurant and bar insurance Kitchens, dining rooms, and what they serve
- Hotel, motel and hospitality insurance Guests, premises, and the building
- Manufacturers insurance The plant, the process, and the product
- Insurance for wholesalers and distributors Warehousing, stock, and what moves through
- Technology insurance Software, services, and the contracts around them
- Nonprofit insurance Boards, volunteers, and the mission
- Special event insurance One venue, one contract, and every date it names
Before you shop
What makes a Texas risk hard to place
“Hard to place” is not a verdict on the business. It means the number of carriers whose appetite covers it is small, so the work moves from comparing quotes to finding the market at all. In this part of Texas it is usually one of five things:
- Coastal windProperty inside the designated catastrophe area
- Wind and hail are often carved out of a commercial property policy near the coast and written separately. Where the building sits decides it, and the boundary runs through the Houston metro rather than around it.
- The class codeWhat the business actually does
- Roofing, trucking, staffing, habitational property, anything involving heights or heat, and anywhere alcohol is a large share of sales. The code follows the operation rather than the sign on the door, and describing it accurately is the difference between a quote and a rescinded one.
- Loss historyUsually five years, sometimes three
- Frequency reads worse than severity to most underwriters: several small claims is a harder conversation than one large one. A loss run you have already requested makes the whole process shorter.
- The building itselfAge, roof, wiring, sprinklers
- A 1970s strip center with an original roof is a different risk from a 2015 shell. The questions are the ones a homeowner gets asked, with more of them.
- A gap in coverCancelled, lapsed or newly formed
- A prior cancellation, a lapse, or a business trading under a year narrows the field on its own. None of it is fatal, and all of it is better said upfront than discovered at binding.
Some classes are only written by surplus lines carriers — a different filing route with more flexible terms, not a lesser policy. What that changes for you is the paperwork and, sometimes, the deductible.
Read this at renewal
The exclusions that surprise people
Every one of these is normal, expected and in almost every policy. They surprise people anyway, because nothing on a renewal notice points at them.
- Flood is not in a commercial property policy. Rising water is a separate policy, and in Harris County the flood map is not the same thing as the flood risk.
- Wind and hail may not be either. Near the coast the peril is often written separately, sometimes with a named-storm deductible set as a percentage of the building value rather than a flat figure.
- General liability excludes your own employees’ injuries. That is what workers’ comp, or a non-subscriber plan, is for.
- General liability excludes vehicles and professional services. Two separate exclusions, two separate policies, and both of them ordinary.
- A data breach is usually an endorsement or nothing. If it matters to the business, it is worth confirming rather than assuming — see cyber liability.
- Umbrella limits sit on top of specific policies. An umbrella only extends the underlying policies it schedules. Anything not on that schedule is not covered by it.
Houston contracting
Certificates, and what the contract is really asking
A contract asking for a certificate is rarely asking only for proof of insurance. What it is usually asking for is endorsements — being named as an additional insured, a waiver of subrogation, cover that is primary and non-contributory. Each of those changes the policy, and none of them is created by the certificate: the certificate reports what the policy already says. So the question a contract raises is never “can I get a certificate”. It is whether the policy behind it says what the contract needs it to say, which is a question to ask before you sign rather than the week work starts. The contractors’ liability page works through how those requirements read on a real jobsite.
Workers’ compensation is the other half, and in Texas it is a real decision rather than a formality — a contract or a public project can require it whatever the statute allows. The workers’ compensation page takes that apart properly, including what going without it actually gives up.
Send the certificate holder’s details and the wording the contract asks for, and it goes out from this office: request a certificate of insurance.
No obligation
Not sure which? That’s the phone call.
Describe the business — what it does, who works there, what it owns, and what anyone has put in writing that you must carry. We will tell you which of these lines actually apply and which you can skip, which is usually the more useful half of the answer: (281) 484-8320.
Already insured with us and just need paperwork? Certificates come from this office too: request a certificate of insurance. Or come in — the Houston office is on FM 1959.
Monday to Thursday, 9:00 to 5:00; Friday, 9:00 to 4:00. 360 FM 1959, Houston, TX77034. Policies written statewide — you do not have to be local.