MOLLY MAID

The Molly Maid franchise agreement requires general liability insurance on an occurrence form at $1,000,000 each occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, including products and completed operations and personal and advertising injury.

The named insured on your certificate is your own legal business entity — the LLC or corporation you operate through. Molly Maid SPV LLC is the franchisor. The agreement requires you to name Molly Maid SPV LLC and its affiliates as additional insured on your general liability and auto policies, with a waiver of subrogation on every liability policy and on your workers' compensation policy.

That satisfies your franchisor. Here is where the requirement ends and your real exposure as a growing residential cleaning operation begins.

The franchisor entity is Molly Maid SPV LLC, a Neighborly brand. The 2025 franchise agreement (Section 9.C) requires you to name Molly Maid SPV LLC and its parents, subsidiaries, directors, officers, employees, and agents as additional insured, with a waiver of subrogation. A waiver of subrogation is a promise from your insurer not to pursue those parties to recover money after it pays a claim.

What the agreement requires you to carry:

General Liability at $1,000,000 each occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, on an occurrence form, including products and completed operations and personal and advertising injury. The occurrence form covers claims based on when the harm happened, not when the claim is filed. The policy must be primary and non-contributory — your policy pays first.

Business Auto Liability at a combined single limit between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 (the franchisor sets the figure, never below $1,000,000), covering owned, hired, and non-owned vehicles — including the cars your cleaners drive between homes. The franchisor must be additional insured on the auto policy, with a waiver of subrogation.

Workers' Compensation required even if your state would not otherwise mandate it — at state-required limits, plus Employers Liability at $1,000,000 across all three limits, with a waiver of subrogation in the franchisor's favor. Workers' compensation pays medical bills and lost wages for an injured cleaner. Employers liability covers lawsuits outside that no-fault system.

Cyber Liability at $500,000 per claim and aggregate, covering data breaches, privacy and security failures, misdirected funds, and related losses. This is a strong, well-specified requirement — online booking and stored payment data make it relevant.

Crime / Employee Theft — comprehensive employee dishonesty and employee theft coverage with a Client's Property Endorsement, at a $5,000 per-occurrence minimum, plus $5,000 for money and securities. This is the coverage that responds when an employee steals from a client. Importantly, the FDD asks for a crime policy with a client's-property endorsement — the correct instrument — but the $5,000 limit is far below what a real theft-from-a-home claim costs.

All policies must be written by an admitted carrier rated A-VIII or better, with 30 days written notice of cancellation by certified mail. The agreement does not require EPLI, and does not require an umbrella, though you may use an umbrella to reach the auto limit.

Molly Maid's FDD does something most cleaning agreements do not: it asks for the right instrument. Instead of a "bond," it requires a crime and employee-theft policy with a Client's Property Endorsement. That matters, because a bond and a crime policy are not the same thing.

A janitorial or business-service bond is a fidelity bond that pays the client, but it usually carries two traps: it often pays only after the employee is criminally convicted of the theft, and the surety then seeks reimbursement from your business. The most common claim — a credible accusation with no proof — can trigger nothing, and even a paid claim can come back to you. A third-party crime policy, the instrument Molly Maid requires, pays without a conviction and does not claw the money back. So the franchise agreement is pointing you at the better coverage.

The problem is the limit. The FDD sets it at $5,000. A single missing watch, a piece of jewelry, or a string of small thefts across a route passes that in one claim. As you scale, the exposure multiplies — more cleaners in more homes means more access and more opportunity — while the $5,000 limit stays frozen. Raise it. Rikor's benchmark is $250,000.

Ask for one more detail by name: the Loss Discovered form. Crime policies come two ways. A loss-sustained form covers a theft only if it both happened and was found during the same policy period. A loss-discovered form covers a theft *found* during the policy period no matter when it began. That difference is decisive for cleaning, where theft is usually a quiet pattern discovered long after it starts.

As you add commercial accounts and recurring residential clients, you start holding keys, fobs, alarm codes, and access cards. Losing one is a specific and surprisingly expensive exposure that the standard policy often does not cover.

When a master key or access fob to a multi-unit building goes missing, the client may have to re-key or re-program every affected lock — sometimes the whole building — and the bill lands on you. A standard general liability policy frequently excludes key and lock replacement, treating it as neither bodily injury nor covered property damage. So the claim that feels like an obvious "we lost it, we'll cover it" turns into a coverage argument.

The fix is a lost-key or key-and-lock endorsement, available on many crime or package policies, sized to the kind of buildings you service. For a Molly Maid operation moving into commercial and multi-unit work, it is a small endorsement against a claim that can reach five figures fast when an entire building has to be re-keyed.

Cleaning means using chemicals around a customer's finishes — countertops, hardwood, stone, fixtures. When a product etches a stone counter or strips a finish, the client files a claim, and whether you are covered depends on a distinction most franchisees never hear about.

The crime policy's Client's Property Endorsement that the FDD requires covers theft of a client's property — not accidental damage. Accidental damage to a customer's belongings falls to general liability, but standard general liability contains a care, custody, and control exclusion that removes coverage for property you were working on or that was in your control when it was damaged. The countertop your cleaner was treating is exactly that kind of property.

The coverage written for accidental damage to a client's property in your hands is care, custody, and control insurance, sometimes packaged as bailee coverage. Molly Maid's FDD does not require it, and the crime endorsement does not fill the gap because it only addresses theft. For a business whose cleaners handle and treat a customer's surfaces all day, this is the coverage that matches the work — and it is separate from the crime coverage that gets the headlines.

Cleaning is physical work on other people's floors — wet surfaces, stairs, bathrooms, ladders for high dusting. A cleaner who slips at a client's house is injured on the job, and that is a workers' compensation claim even though it happened off your premises. The Molly Maid agreement requires workers' compensation regardless of whether your state would otherwise mandate it, which closes the most common gap before it opens.

Two things keep this coverage working as your crew grows. First, classification: cleaning payroll belongs under NCCI code 9014, and your premium is built on that code and your payroll. Second, the audit. Your workers' compensation premium is trued up at year-end against your actual payroll — and against any 1099 cleaners you brought in for overflow who could not show their own coverage. A cleaner you treat as a contractor, but who cannot produce her own policy, is added to your payroll at audit and charged premium at your rate.

Most cleaning franchisees bring in extra help during busy stretches, and the audit is where an undocumented helper becomes an unexpected bill. Rikor's subcontractor compliance monitoring tool tracks those certificates in real time, so a lapse surfaces before the audit, not after. [See how subcontractor compliance works →](/subcontractor-compliance/) Collect a current certificate from every 1099 cleaner before she starts, and verify the date.

The honest answer is that your premium depends on details specific to your operation. What you can understand is how the number is built — and the part that catches franchisees at year-end.

Workers' compensation is usually the largest line for a cleaning business, because the model is labor-heavy. Carriers price it with a formula: your payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for the cleaning classification (NCCI code 9014), multiplied by your experience modification. The rate itself is set by your state's rating bureau, not the carrier — the insurer applies the state's number.

Both workers' compensation and general liability are auditable. An audit is the carrier's year-end review that compares what you estimated when the policy started against what actually happened, then adjusts the premium up or down. For a cleaning business, both lines are usually rated on payroll, so the number moves with your actual wages — and with any 1099 cleaners who could not show their own coverage.

A simple example tied to growth. Say you estimate $180,000 in payroll when the policy starts, and a year of new accounts and added cleaners brings you to $280,000. At a workers' compensation rate near $3.75 per $100 of payroll, the audit adds about $3,750 on that $100,000 difference. The bill usually arrives as a single lump sum a few months after the policy year closes — which is exactly when a fast-growing franchisee feels it most.

For a residential cleaning franchise with ten to twenty employees, a complete program — general liability, auto, workers' compensation, cyber, crime at a real limit, EPLI, and care-custody-control — commonly runs in the range of $8,000 to $14,000 per year. The labor-driven workers' compensation line and the employment exposure are what make a cleaning program cost more than the bare general liability number suggests.

The practical move on audits is to estimate payroll close to reality, and if you add cleaners fast mid-year, ask your carrier for a mid-term adjustment. Spreading the increase across the remaining payments is far easier on cash flow than a surprise lump sum after the year ends. The audit is not a penalty — it is the carrier collecting premium that was always owed once the real payroll is known, and it refunds you if you overestimated.

Molly Maid's FDD is well-built in places — a real cyber requirement at $500,000, employers liability at $1,000,000, and a crime policy rather than a bond. Where experienced operators go further is about two things: raising a crime limit that is far too low, and adding the employment coverage the FDD leaves out. The recommendations below are Rikor's baselines for a newer franchisee, calibrated to your headcount and revenue.

Crime / employee-theft coverage at $250,000, not $5,000 — on a Loss Discovered form. This is the most important gap. The FDD requires the right instrument but sets the limit at $5,000, which one jewelry or cash claim erases. Raise it to $250,000 and confirm the Loss Discovered form so a theft pattern found after an employee leaves is still covered. Keep the Client's Property Endorsement the FDD requires.

EPLI — the FDD does not require it, and it should. A high-turnover, in-home cleaning workforce is the textbook employment-practices exposure: wrongful-termination, discrimination, harassment, and wage claims. Molly Maid's agreement requires no EPLI at all. Rikor recommends standalone EPLI at $250,000 for a newer franchisee, scaling toward $500,000 to $1,000,000 as you pass ten employees or $750,000 in revenue. For a growing crew, this is not optional.

Care, Custody & Control / Bailee coverage. The crime endorsement covers theft of a client's property; it does not cover accidental damage to it. The standard general liability care-custody-control exclusion removes exactly the claims your cleaners create — an etched counter, a stripped finish, a broken antique. Carry it at a $150,000 baseline and size up for high-value homes.

Employers Liability at the FDD's $1,000,000 — already correct. Keep it; do not let a cheaper quote drop it.

Cyber at the FDD's $500,000 — already strong. Molly Maid's requirement is well-specified. Confirm your policy includes social-engineering and funds-transfer coverage within it.

Umbrella — driven by your exposure. The FDD does not require an umbrella, and an umbrella adds a layer of limit above your general liability, auto, and employers liability. For mostly residential cleaning, the realistic worst case usually sits inside your primary limits, so the first dollars are better spent raising the crime limit and adding EPLI. An umbrella becomes appropriate as you add commercial accounts that require higher certificates, run a larger fleet of cars between homes, or take on facility work where a single premises injury can be severe. Size it to the commercial work you actually take on.