WHAT EMPOWER BRANDS REQUIRES OF ITS FRANCHISEES

General liability at $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate is the confirmed floor for Empower Brands' active franchises with completed FDD extractions. Canopy Lawn Care, operating under Canopy Franchise Corporation — a Delaware corporation — confirms this requirement in its 2026 FDD. Other brands in the Empower portfolio are at varying stages of FDD extraction. Requirements shown for brands with pending extractions reflect Rikor's benchmark for their respective trades.

Commercial auto at $1 million combined single limit applies across all Empower brands that operate service vehicles. For lawn and exterior brands, this means every vehicle on a daily route. For water restoration brands, this means the service vehicles, the equipment trailers, and any crew transport.

Workers' compensation follows state statutory limits. Employers' liability is $1 million per accident, $1 million per employee, $1 million policy limit — consistent across all Empower trades and brands, with no exceptions.

The additional insured entity requirement is brand-specific across the Empower portfolio. "Empower Brands" as a family name does not function as an additional insured on any certificate. The brand-level entity is the correct additional insured, and it is different for each brand. Canopy Lawn Care requires Canopy Franchise Corporation on the certificate. Other Empower brands require their own entities. A franchisee who holds two or more Empower brands cannot use one certificate to satisfy both.

FDD extractions are in progress or pending for several Empower brands. The full brand-specific articles linked below reflect confirmed data where available and benchmark language where extraction is pending. Requirements diverge significantly between Empower's service brands and its restoration or remodeling brands. Each brand's full requirements are covered below.

How Empower Brands insurance requirements vary by brand

The sharpest fault line in the Empower portfolio is between service frequency brands — lawn, exterior cleaning, maintenance — and damage-involved brands — water restoration, remediation, interior improvement. These two categories of work produce different WC classifications, different GL exposure bases, and different completed operations profiles. An operator running both under the same policy without trade-level differentiation is carrying the wrong cost structure and, at audit, will receive a balance-due bill that reflects the undifferentiated mix.

Lawn care and exterior maintenance brands carry commercial auto as their primary liability exposure. Daily route vehicles, equipment trailers, and hand tools represent the day-to-day risk. Property damage claims on a lawn service are lower severity — a sprinkler head clipped by a mower, a fence damaged on a trimming pass. Frequency is what drives cost, not individual event size.

Water restoration and remediation brands carry a structurally different risk. A single restoration job on a Category 3 water loss can involve structural tear-out, hazardous materials, and weeks of operations in a customer's home. The completed operations tail is long. A remediated home that develops secondary moisture issues six, twelve, or eighteen months after the job is a completed operations claim, and the dollar amounts in restoration are not small. A $60,000 Category 3 water loss job carries potential completed operations exposure that a $300 lawn maintenance visit does not.

What Empower Brands franchisees get wrong about insurance

The WC classification error is the most financially damaging mistake for multi-trade Empower operators, and the claim scenario above illustrates why. Running two trades with different WC classifications under a single policy class code produces a year-end audit bill that reflects the rate differential on every dollar of misclassified payroll. It does not surface as a claim denial. It surfaces as an invoice. The fix is accurate class code assignment at policy inception — one code per trade, separated clearly, so the audit produces no surprises.

The entity name error follows the same pattern as every multi-brand family. Canopy Lawn Care requires Canopy Franchise Corporation on the certificate. Every other Empower brand requires its own entity. Franchisees who acquire a second Empower brand and update the COI by hand from a prior certificate introduce the risk of listing the wrong entity. When the franchisor verifies compliance, the certificate fails — and the opening timeline moves.

The completed operations structure for restoration brands is the third error. A water restoration franchisee whose completed operations coverage sits inside the general aggregate — sharing the same $2 million pool as every other covered event during the policy year — is exposed to aggregate depletion on a long-tail claim basis. Restoration jobs are high-value, high-touch, and often revisited. A separate completed operations sub-limit is not optional for restoration operations that run significant job volume. It is a structural necessity.

What does Empower Brands franchise insurance cost?

Canopy Lawn Care at single-territory startup: $3,800 to $7,500 annually, reflecting commercial auto for route vehicles, GL for property damage exposure, and WC for crew payroll at the correct lawn care classification. As territory count grows and vehicle count grows, commercial auto becomes the dominant premium driver.

Water restoration brands in the Empower portfolio operate in a higher cost category. GL base rates for restoration work are higher than for lawn service. Completed operations exposure requires separate sub-limit endorsements. WC rates for restoration classifications run meaningfully higher than for grounds care. Single-territory startup for a water restoration brand: $7,000 to $14,000 annually.

Multi-brand operators who correctly separate their policies — or correctly endorse a combined policy to reflect each trade — will see total premiums run higher than any single-brand estimate. That is correct. Separating the risk is more expensive than blending it. It is also significantly less expensive than the audit bill that arrives when the blended approach meets a year-end carrier review.

Item 7 figures, where available, reflect first-year minimum operations. Expect a 20 to 35 percent gap between FDD estimates and actual costs once audited lines settle.

What to verify before your Empower Brands coverage is final

Before any Empower Brands certificate is issued or operations begin, verify six things. First, confirm the exact legal entity for your specific brand from your signed franchise agreement — not the family parent. Second, if you operate more than one Empower brand, confirm that each brand's entity is separately endorsed on your certificate or policy. Third, verify your WC class codes against your actual trades — lawn care, restoration, and remodeling classify differently, and the difference creates audit exposure if it is not addressed at policy inception. Fourth, for restoration or remodeling brands, confirm whether your completed operations coverage sits within the general aggregate or carries a separate sub-limit. Fifth, review your commercial auto schedule to confirm every vehicle in every brand is listed. Sixth, set your Item 7 estimate beside your actual quote and build the gap into your first-year operating budget.

If any of those items surface a question, the answer is in the brand article for your specific Empower brand, linked below.

Wade Millward, CIC | Founder & CEO, Rikor Insurance