Your insurance obligations come from your activity, and micro-entrepreneur status changes nothing. A developer, a designer or a copywriter is not required by any text to take out professional liability insurance.
Three other obligations, however, are almost always forgotten: the vehicle, the rented premises and employees' health cover.
Building, major renovation, extension, and anything touching the structure itself. Ten-year cover is compulsory here: going without it is a criminal offence, and it must be taken out before the work starts.
Nothing leaves this tab: the diagnosis runs in your browser, and everything is erased when you close it.
Information verified on October 1, 2026. Indicative assessment with no legal force. The rules it applies are taken from official sources and dated, but it knows of your situation only what you tell it: only the authorities can settle your case.
The official pages where we read the rules and amounts applied here.
A drywaller with €8,000 of turnover owes ten-year cover just as a fifty-person firm does, and a developer on €80,000 owes none. Neither the legal form nor the amount collected counts.
Ten-year cover and professional liability are well known. The other three sit on the same official page and appear almost nowhere else:
Professional liability insurance is required of regulated activities, defined by the insurance code or by the texts governing each profession. The official page does not enumerate them: it gives examples and points to the INPI directory of regulated activities and professions. So we publish no list: a trade missing from an incomplete enumeration is not thereby exempt, and that is exactly the mistake made by pages that do publish one.
What counts is not the date of the damage but the date the site opened, which must fall within the policy's validity. A terminated policy therefore still covers sites opened while it was running, and a site opened without cover will never be caught up by a later policy. Second condition: only the works declared in the policy are covered. A drywaller who builds a conservatory without telling his insurer works uncovered on that site, while still paying his premium.
| The insurance | Mandatory for | What triggers it |
|---|---|---|
| Ten-year construction cover | Construction trades | Articles 1792 of the civil code and L. 241-1 of the insurance code |
| Professional liability | Regulated activities | The insurance code and the texts governing each profession |
| Vehicle insurance | Any vehicle used for the activity | Business use, not the registration |
| Premises insurance | Tenants of business premises | Fire, explosion, water damage, natural disasters |
| Supplementary health cover | Employers, from the first employee | Employer contribution of at least 50% |
| Professional liability for everyone else | Nobody, as a matter of law | The contract: agencies, large accounts, public tenders |
In construction, your ten-year liability certificate is attached to every quotation and every invoice. If your activity is a craft trade subject to mandatory insurance, your quotations and invoices also carry the insurer's name, their contact details and the policy's geographic scope. Obligations recorded from service-public.gouv.fr, reviewed on 25 September 2026.
Sonia, a graphic designer, took out professional liability cover when she started: her agency clients asked for it.
Two years later she added a camera equipment resale activity, without telling her insurer.
A faulty body injures a client. She produces her certificate, still valid.
The insurer refuses: resale is not among the activities declared in the policy.
After two years of premiums, her only claim is not covered.
Have all your activities written into the policy, as you actually carry them out, and tell the insurer whenever you add one.
Read the length of the subsequent period. A client can claim long after delivery, and many policies only respond on that condition.
For a construction job, the cover is taken out before the site opens, and the certificate is handed to the client before the first hammer blow.
Check whether your trade is regulated in the INPI directory. That is where the administration points, and no closed list exists elsewhere.
Cover amounts, the excess and the geographic scope change everything. A rate copied from a comparison site is only worth the policy it sells.
The premium is a cost like any other, and the micro scheme does not deduct it. The flat-rate allowance is deemed to cover it, whether it exists or not.
An unregulated activity has no legal liability insurance obligation, but the certificate is still what the first serious client will ask for.
Failing to hold ten-year construction cover is a criminal offence under article L. 243-3 of the insurance code.
It depends entirely on the activity. Three questions settle it: do you touch construction, is your trade regulated, and do you use a vehicle, rent premises or employ anyone? The first two govern ten-year cover and professional liability cover; the third opens three obligations that checklists almost always forget.
No, no text imposes it on an activity that is neither regulated nor in construction. If almost everyone believes otherwise, it is because most pages on the subject are written by the people selling the policy, and a commercial requirement ends up presented as a legal one. In practice, your clients are the ones who will ask for it.
No closed list is published: the official micro-entrepreneur insurance page gives a few examples and points to the INPI directory of regulated activities and professions. That is where to look, and a trade missing from an enumeration found elsewhere is not thereby exempt.
Only the activities declared to the insurer, as written in the policy. A designer who starts reselling equipment, a trainer who starts hosting websites: the certificate stays valid, the cover does not follow. Tell your insurer every time your activity changes.
Yes. The obligation covers every vehicle used for business, and it is the use that counts, not the registration. A policy taken out for strictly private use may not respond on a business journey: declare that use to your insurer.
Free, no account needed. Paste this code into your page: the tool shows in full and adjusts to its height. The figures are kept up to date on our side, with nothing to do on yours.
<iframe src="https://believemy.com/embed/en/mandatory-insurance" title="Mandatory insurance" width="100%" height="720" style="border:0;max-width:760px" loading="lazy"></iframe> <script async src="https://believemy.com/static/embed-v1.js"></script> <p>Mandatory insurance, a tool by <a href="https://believemy.com/en/tools/mandatory-insurance">Believemy</a></p>
By embedding this tool, you accept our terms of use for the tools.
You are the only one carrying your business.
Believemy is the school for solopreneurs. You learn to build, to raise your game with AI, and to sell.
See the courses