STANLEY STEEMER

The Stanley Steemer franchise disclosure document requires general liability on an occurrence form at $1,000,000 per occurrence, commercial auto at $1,000,000, workers' compensation at statutory limits plus Employers Liability at $500,000, employment practices liability at $500,000, and a $2,000,000 umbrella covering both the general liability and auto. If you provide Reconstruction Services, a separate $3,000,000/$4,000,000 construction liability policy is also required.

The named insured on your certificate is your own legal business entity — the LLC or corporation you operate through. Stanley Steemer International, Inc. is the franchisor. The reviewed FDD does not specify additional-insured naming, waiver of subrogation, or whether those endorsements are required — confirm those requirements from your current franchise agreement before you issue a certificate to anyone.

That is what the FDD establishes. Here is what a carpet, tile, hardwood, upholstery, and air duct cleaning operation actually faces — and where the FDD's stack has gaps the franchise agreement does not fill.

The franchisor entity is Stanley Steemer International, Inc. The 2025 franchise disclosure document (Note 7 and Item 8) sets out the following required coverages.

General Liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence, on an occurrence form, including products liability, completed operations, personal injury, and advertising injury. The occurrence form covers claims based on when the harm happened, not when the claim is filed. The FDD does not specify a general aggregate — Rikor recommends confirming a $2,000,000 aggregate in your actual policy.

Commercial Auto Liability at $1,000,000 combined single limit, covering all owned, hired, and non-owned vehicles used in connection with your Stanley Steemer business. Combined single limit means the $1,000,000 applies to any combination of bodily injury and property damage from a single accident.

Workers Compensation at statutory limits required by your state, plus Employers Liability at $500,000 each accident, $500,000 disease each employee, and $500,000 disease policy limit. Workers' compensation pays medical bills and lost wages for an injured technician. Employers Liability covers lawsuits that fall outside that no-fault system — typically claims that the employer was negligent in a way that contributed to the injury.

Employment Practices Liability (EPLI) at $500,000 per occurrence, including wage and hour defense coverage. 

Employment practices liability insurance covers claims from current or former employees alleging wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, or wage violations.

Umbrella / Excess Liability at $2,000,000 per occurrence, follow-form, covering both your general liability and commercial auto. This is an unusual and notable requirement for a home-services FDD — most franchisors leave the umbrella decision to the franchisee. Follow-form means the umbrella applies the same terms and exclusions as the underlying policies.

Construction Services Liability at $3,000,000 per occurrence and $4,000,000 aggregate — required only if you offer Reconstruction Services. If you expand into water damage reconstruction, this line becomes mandatory.

All policies must be issued by an admitted carrier rated A- VII or better by A.M. Best.

Stanley Steemer's service list is long: carpet extraction, tile and grout, hardwood, upholstery, air ducts, stone. Each one is a surface or item the technician works on directly. And each one runs into the same two standard general liability exclusions.

The first is the "your work" exclusion. This removes coverage for damage to work you performed. If your hot water extraction process over-soaks a carpet and the fibers delaminate, the policy calls that your work and steps back. The second is the care, custody, and control (CCC) exclusion, which removes coverage for property in your control or that you were working on when it was damaged. The antique rug your crew moved to clean, the hardwood floor your technician treated — all of it is in your care during the job, and a standard policy excludes damage to it.

These two exclusions work together to remove coverage for exactly the claims a carpet and upholstery cleaner faces most often. Stanley Steemer's FDD requires general liability and a $2,000,000 umbrella, but neither document names the CCC exclusion or requires it to be removed. The umbrella is follow-form — it tracks whatever the GL covers and excludes. If the GL excludes damage to the item you were cleaning, the umbrella excludes it too.

The coverage written for damage to a customer's property in your care is care-custody-and-control insurance, sometimes written as a CCC endorsement on the GL or as a separate inland marine bailee form. It is not automatic. You have to ask for it by name.

Hot water extraction — the method Stanley Steemer uses — drives hot water into carpet fibers and extracts it with powerful suction. 

The process is controlled, but over-wetting still happens: a saturated section on a tight-pad installation, moisture that wicks under a transition strip, or a job where dry-down on a below-grade room took longer than expected. On older homes or slab-level floors, that moisture can sit for days before anyone notices.

The damage follows in two stages. First, the direct water damage — buckled hardwood, swollen subfloor panels, or delaminated padding. Second, mold. Standard general liability policies contain a mold and fungus exclusion. Trapped moisture under carpet or against a wood subfloor is a reliable environment for mold growth, and when a homeowner discovers it weeks after the job, the chain of causation points back to the cleaning visit. The mold exclusion is exactly where the insurer goes first.

The occurrence form your agreement requires helps with timing. Under an occurrence form, a loss that traces to work done during the policy period is covered under that period — even if the damage surfaces later. But the occurrence form does not touch the mold exclusion, which is a separate policy provision. To cover mold claims that trace to an over-wet job, you need a mold endorsement added to the policy, and you need to confirm that resulting water-damage coverage is intact.

Stanley Steemer's model is a visit-and-leave service — a crew arrives, cleans, and departs, often with the homeowner present for much of the job. The in-home theft exposure is lower than a recurring maid service where the same cleaner is in the same home every week with minimal supervision. But it is not zero. A technician working room to room while a client steps away has access, and a missing item surfaces quickly in a home where the owner knows their belongings.

General liability does not cover employee theft. Theft by your own technician is dishonesty, not an accident, and the standard policy excludes it. The stronger response is a third-party commercial crime policy — not a bond. Here is the distinction that matters at claim time.

A janitorial or business-service bond is a fidelity bond. It protects the client if your employee steals, but it typically carries two structural weaknesses. First, most bonds pay only after the employee is criminally convicted of the theft. The most common real claim — a credible accusation with no proof, no arrest, no charge — triggers nothing. Second, the surety seeks reimbursement from your business after it pays the client. It is a credit instrument, not true loss coverage. You can end up funding the loss anyway.

A third-party crime policy is a two-party contract between the insurer and your business. It pays without requiring a conviction, and it does not claw the money back. Stanley Steemer's FDD does not require either a bond or a crime policy — the decision is yours. Rikor's benchmark is a third-party crime policy at $250,000 with a theft-of-customer-property endorsement.

If you carry one, ask for it on a Loss Discovered form. A theft discovered during the policy period is covered no matter when it began — even if it started under a prior carrier or during a coverage gap. A Loss Sustained form covers only thefts that both occurred and were found within the same policy period. For a service where a client might notice a missing item days after the visit, the Loss Discovered form is the one that still responds.

Stanley Steemer operations span residential homes and commercial facilities. A technician cleaning the carpet in a hotel lobby, an office building, or a medical suite is doing the same physical work in a different setting — and the workers compensation question is the same in both cases. Workers' compensation covers work-related injuries regardless of where the job site is. A technician who slips on a wet tile floor while extracting carpet at a commercial account is injured on the job, and that is a workers' compensation claim even though it happened at someone else's facility.

Two things are worth understanding about how WC works for a Stanley Steemer operation.

First, the rate. Workers' compensation premium is built with a formula: your payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for the cleaning classification code (NCCI code 9014), multiplied by your experience modification. The experience modification is a multiplier derived from your prior claims history — a low-claims operation pays less than the state rate, and a high-claims operation pays more. The per-$100 rate for each classification code is set by your state's rating bureau — the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) in most states, or an independent state bureau in a few others. The insurance company applies the bureau's rate. It does not set the rate.

Second, the audit. Workers' compensation is auditable. At the end of the policy year, the carrier reviews your actual payroll against what you estimated at policy start and adjusts the premium up or down. A technician you treat as a 1099 contractor who cannot produce their own workers' compensation certificate becomes your payroll at audit. That is not a claim denial — it is an end-of-year billing adjustment. Rikor's subcontractor compliance monitoring tool tracks those certificates in real time so a lapse surfaces before the next job, not at audit. 

See how subcontractor compliance works →

The Employers Liability limits the FDD sets at $500,000 are below Rikor's benchmark of $1,000,000. Employers Liability covers lawsuits outside the no-fault workers' compensation system — claims that the employer's negligence contributed to the accident. Raising those limits to $1,000,000 each accident, each employee, and policy limit closes the gap at a small incremental cost.

The honest answer is that your premium depends on your state, your payroll, your revenue, and your claims history. What you can control is understanding how the number is built — and preparing for the part that arrives as a surprise.

Workers' compensation and general liability are both 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. Both lines are reconciled this way. The audit can adjust in either direction — if you overestimated, you get money back.

General liability for a cleaning contractor is usually rated on gross receipts — the carrier charges a rate per $1,000 of revenue and multiplies it by your annual revenue. Workers' compensation is rated on payroll: your total payroll divided by 100, multiplied by the state bureau's rate for NCCI code 9014, multiplied by your experience modification.

A worked example on the revenue side. Say you estimate $400,000 in revenue when the policy starts — a reasonable year-one figure for a Stanley Steemer franchise. You land a commercial hotel contract mid-year and close at $620,000. If your general liability is rated at approximately $7 per $1,000 of revenue, the audit adds about $1,540 on the $220,000 difference. That bill usually arrives as a lump sum a few months after the policy year closes.

Stanley Steemer's FDD builds a more complete stack than most cleaning agreements — the required umbrella, required EPLI, and required construction services liability for restoration work are all meaningful. The gaps lie in what the FDD does not address: the base GL exclusions that most directly affect cleaning operations, the limits it set below benchmark, and the coverages it left blank entirely. The recommendations below are Rikor's baselines calibrated for a newer franchisee, scaled by revenue, payroll, and commercial account mix.

Care, custody, and control endorsement — remove the exclusion from the base GL. The FDD requires a $2,000,000 umbrella, but the umbrella is follow-form. If the base GL excludes damage to the item you were cleaning, the umbrella excludes it too. Add a CCC endorsement to the GL itself so that the policy can respond to damage to a customer's carpet, tile, hardwood, or upholstery. Set the limit to the value of the materials you actually clean — for operators cleaning high-end hardwood, stone, and commercial tile, $100,000 or more is the realistic target.

Mold endorsement and resulting water-damage confirmation. Hot water extraction is controlled, but over-wetting is not impossible, and the standard mold and fungus exclusion is in every base GL policy. A mold endorsement lets the policy respond to mold traced to an over-wet job. Confirm resulting water-damage coverage is intact at the same time.

Employers Liability at $1,000,000 — raise from the FDD's $500,000. The FDD sets Employers Liability at $500,000 each accident, which is below Rikor's benchmark of $1,000,000. The incremental cost is small, and a litigated employer-negligence claim from a technician injured at a commercial account can reach that gap.

Third-party crime policy at $250,000, Loss Discovered form. The FDD is silent on crime. Your technicians are in customers' homes and commercial spaces. General liability excludes employee theft. Carry a third-party crime policy — not a janitorial bond — at $250,000 with a theft-of-customer-property endorsement, on a Loss Discovered form so that a loss found after the job, or after a policy switch, is still covered.

EPLI is a floor — review at scale. The FDD requires $500,000 of employment practices liability insurance including wage and hour defense. That is a meaningful starting point. As your technician headcount grows past ten or your revenue crosses $750,000, revisit the limit. High-turnover cleaning operations generate employment claims at above-average rates — wrongful termination, wage disputes, and scheduling complaints all go through EPLI.

Cyber at $250,000. The FDD is silent on cyber. Stanley Steemer's national online booking platform, customer address database, and payment processing create a data breach exposure. Rikor's benchmark for a newer franchisee is $250,000, scaling to $500,000 once annual revenue exceeds $750,000.

Contractors Pollution Liability for chemical exposure. Tile, stone, grout, and hardwood cleaning chemistries can trigger the standard pollution exclusion if a product release or reaction causes damage or injury. Contractors Pollution Liability (CPL), sometimes called Environmental Liability, at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $1,000,000 aggregate backs up that gap for franchisees offering the full Stanley Steemer service menu.

Inland marine for extraction equipment. Stanley Steemer trucks carry expensive hot water extraction equipment, hoses, and specialty cleaning machines. The standard auto policy covers the vehicle — it does not cover the equipment inside it. 

An inland marine policy, also called tools and equipment coverage, covers that equipment whether it is in the truck, on the job site, or being moved between locations. Size it to the replacement value of what your crew actually carries.

Umbrella — verify it sits on the right base. Stanley Steemer's required $2,000,000 umbrella is follow-form over GL and auto. 

Verify the underlying GL carries the CCC endorsement and mold endorsement before the umbrella is bound. An umbrella that tracks a base policy with open exclusions for CCC and mold does not fill those gaps — it only adds limit for losses the base GL already covers. For franchisees taking on commercial hotel, hospital, or facility accounts that require $3,000,000 on the certificate, the umbrella is also the mechanism that lifts the combined limit when those clients require it.