South Carolina lets a licensed general contractor skip the net-worth financial statement by filing a surety bond with the Contractor’s Licensing Board instead. This page issues the $80,000 bond amount, and ours is $1,600 flat — the price you see is the price at checkout. The application includes a credit consent, but it authorizes a soft credit pull only — a soft inquiry that never affects your score.
















A contractor bond filed in place of financials is about the simplest thing in surety. Here is the entire process:
Entity details, years in business, an effective date, and the term you want. No balance sheet, no CPA review, no scavenger hunt for schedules.
Contractor bonds like this are among the thousands of bond types that issue right after purchase. If a check ever runs it is a soft pull that will not touch your score. At most, 1–2 business days.
Your executed bond and power of attorney arrive by email, ready to attach to a new license application or a renewal packet. Wet-ink original mailed on request.
South Carolina licenses general contractors through the Contractor’s Licensing Board, an agency of the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation (LLR). A license is required once the total cost of construction exceeds $10,000, and every licensee is slotted into a license group that caps what it may bid or take per job.
The group is normally proved with a financial statement showing minimum net worth or working capital. Section 40-11-262 gives an applicant a second route: file a surety bond written by a surety authorized in South Carolina and skip the financial statement entirely. That is the filing this page issues — a bond in place of a balance sheet, which is why contractors who do not want to hand the state audited financials use it.
The bond names the State of South Carolina as obligee and runs for the benefit of anyone damaged by the contractor’s breach of the contracting laws. It must be continuous for as long as the license is held, it supplements rather than replaces any bid, performance, or payment bond a project requires, and cancellation takes 30 days’ notice. If the bond ever comes off, the licensee has 10 days to prove the net worth for its group or the license is subject to suspension.
It is not insurance for you. If the surety pays a claim, you repay the surety. The Board may also require an increased bond after a finding of a violation — proportional to how serious or repeated the offence is — and may reduce it again after a year once the violations are cured. We track your expiry and notify you at 60 and 30 days so the filing never lapses.
These are the actual issuing fields — entity details, your effective date, and a one-time consent that authorizes a soft credit pull only.
Start the application →$1,600 flat, soft pull only, bond often issued in the same sitting. Free until issued.