VODA CLEANING & RESTORATION

Voda Cleaning & Restoration began franchising in 2023 and reached 270 locations in three years. The growth is built on a dual-service model: carpet, upholstery, and tile cleaning on one side; water damage restoration, mold remediation, and odor mitigation on the other. That model creates two distinct insurance profiles inside one franchise agreement.

The Voda franchise disclosure document requires more coverage than almost any other brand in the cleaning cluster. It requires general liability, commercial auto, workers' compensation, professional liability, pollution liability, cyber, employment practices liability, third-party crime, and bailee's coverage. Most cleaning franchisees have never heard of half those terms. Knowing what they cover — and where the FDD's limits still fall short — is what separates a compliant program from one that actually works.

The franchisor entity is FPB DNA Cleaning and Restoration LLC. That is the legal name for the additional insured on your certificate of insurance. The standard additional insured construction is: *FPB DNA Cleaning and Restoration LLC, its parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, successors, and assigns.

The 2025 FDD (Section 7.12) sets out the following required coverages. Certificates must be provided at least 14 days before you begin operations and annually before each renewal.

General Liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence, $2,000,000 general aggregate, $2,000,000 products and completed operations aggregate, $1,000,000 personal and advertising injury, $50,000 damage to rented premises, $5,000 medical expense. The occurrence form is required. The FDD specifies the policy must be primary and non-contributory — meaning your policy pays first, without asking another policy to contribute. The FDD also requires a waiver of subrogation and an additional insured endorsement for FPB DNA Cleaning and Restoration LLC.

Automobile Liability at $1,000,000 combined single limit, covering all owned, non-owned, leased, and hired vehicles. The FDD requires an additional insured endorsement and waiver of subrogation on the auto policy.

Workers Compensation at state statutory limits with a waiver of subrogation. Employers Liability at $1,000,000 each accident, $1,000,000 per employee disease, $1,000,000 policy disease limit. Workers' compensation (WC) covers medical bills and lost wages when an employee is injured on the job. Employers liability covers lawsuits filed outside the workers' compensation system.

Professional Liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate. Voda requires this because restoration technicians inspect damaged property, assess the scope of remediation, and make professional judgments about moisture levels, mold extent, and structural drying protocols. A wrong call on any of those is a professional errors and omissions claim — not an accident a general liability policy covers.

Pollution Liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate. The FDD prohibits both a mold exclusion and a pollution exclusion on any policy. This is the most sophisticated FDD language in the cleaning cluster. Sewage water, mold spores, antimicrobial chemicals, and the biological contamination in a flooded space are all pollutants under a standard general liability policy — and a standard GL excludes them all.

Cyber Liability at $250,000 per occurrence and aggregate.

Employment Practices Liability (EPLI) at $100,000 per occurrence and aggregate, including third-party liability and at least $25,000 in wage and hour coverage. EPLI covers claims from employees or former employees — wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment — and with third-party liability, claims from clients about employee conduct on the job.

Third-Party Crime at $100,000. This covers theft of a client's property by your employees.

Bailee's Coverage for contents in care, custody, and control, at a $50,000 minimum. A bailee is someone who holds another person's property for a purpose. During a restoration job, your crew moves client property — furniture, appliances, documents, valuables — out of the affected area. That property is in your care. Bailee's coverage is what responds if it is damaged, lost, or destroyed while in your custody.

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

Every cleaning franchise shares this exposure. When your technician cleans a wool rug, steam-extracts an upholstered sofa, or strips and reseals a tile floor, that item is under your hands. If the rug bleeds color, the cushion fabric shrinks, or the tile finish dulls, the client files a claim against your business.

Standard general liability is built to exclude both of those outcomes. The "your work" exclusion removes coverage for damage to the work you performed. The care, custody, and control (CCC) exclusion removes coverage for property in your control at the time it is damaged.

Together those two exclusions apply to almost every item your cleaning crew is working on at the time of damage. The way around them is a bailee's policy or a care-custody-and-control endorsement, which restores coverage for client property in your care. Voda's FDD requires bailee's coverage at $50,000. That is a meaningful requirement that most cleaning brands leave out entirely.

The question is whether $50,000 is enough for what your customers bring you. A single fine area rug, an antique desk, a sectional with custom fabric, or a stone countertop can individually exceed $50,000. Experienced operators raise that limit to reflect what they actually clean — not to the FDD floor.

The cleaning side of Voda creates a straightforward care-custody-and-control exposure: you work on an item and might damage it. The restoration side creates something larger — and the distinction is where most Voda operators underestimate their program.

When a water damage job comes in, your crew does not just clean. They extract water, set drying equipment, and move furniture and contents out of the affected area so the structure can dry. A client's bookshelves, appliances, photo albums, business records, electronics, and valuables may be moved to another room, loaded into your vehicle, or transferred to a temporary storage facility for the days or weeks the drying process takes.

When those items leave the client's control and enter yours, you are legally a bailee — someone who holds another person's property for a defined purpose. A bailee has a legal duty to return that property in the same condition it was received.

Standard general liability does not cover property in your care, custody, or control. Standard commercial property covers equipment and property at your business location — not a client's belongings stored temporarily at your warehouse. The gap between those two policies is exactly where bailee's exposure sits.

Voda's FDD requires bailee's coverage at $50,000. For a small residential job with modest furniture, that may be adequate. For a commercial account, a large household move-out during a multi-week drying project, or a client whose home contains valuable art, electronics, or jewelry, $50,000 is a starting point — not a final answer. The right limit is the value of the largest realistic inventory of client property your crew might hold at one time, not the smallest.

This is where Voda's FDD shows exactly how seriously the franchisor understands the restoration exposure. The standard general liability policy excludes pollution. Mold, fungus, sewage, and biological contamination are treated as pollutants under most policy forms — even when the source is a residential burst pipe or a backed-up floor drain.

Voda's FDD prohibits a pollution exclusion on all required policies. That prohibition matters beyond the compliance checkbox. A category-3 water loss — sewage or flood water — involves biohazard material. Antimicrobial products used in remediation are chemical applications. Mold that grows in a wall cavity after a drying job that missed a moisture pocket is a biological agent. The standard GL policy excludes the cost to remediate every one of those.

A contractors pollution liability (CPL) policy is a separate policy designed for contractors who work in environments with chemical or biological exposure. It covers bodily injury and property damage caused by pollutants released during your work, third-party cleanup costs, and on-site remediation expenses. For a restoration contractor, it is not optional. It is the policy that covers the majority of your worst-case claims.

The FDD prohibition on mold exclusions applies to all required policies. That matters for both your CPL and your professional liability policy. Some CPL forms use broad pollution language but then carve mold back out by name. Some professional liability forms exclude mold-related professional errors separately. Confirm that both forms implement the FDD prohibition — not just reference it.

Restoration work creates an in-home exposure that a carpet cleaning job rarely matches. Your technicians may be inside a flooded or fire-damaged home for days or weeks, often while the homeowner has temporarily relocated. They have access to rooms, closets, and storage areas that a single-visit cleaner never enters. The property owner is gone. The contents are not.

General liability does not cover employee theft. Theft by your own employees is a dishonesty act, not an accident, and the standard policy excludes it. The coverage written for this risk is a commercial crime policy with a third-party crime endorsement, which covers theft of a client's property by your employees — without requiring a criminal conviction.

Many operators assume a bond handles this. A janitorial or business-service bond is a type of fidelity bond. It typically pays only after the employee is criminally convicted of the theft. The most common real-world scenario — a homeowner who returns home and finds items missing, believes a crew member is responsible, but has no witness and no proof — often produces no conviction. Without a conviction, the bond pays nothing. The bond also expects to be repaid by your business after it pays the client. A commercial crime policy does not require a conviction and does not claw the money back. The bond satisfies a compliance checkbox. The crime policy answers the actual claim.

Voda's FDD requires a third-party crime policy at $100,000 — a more serious requirement than most cleaning brands carry. For a restoration crew that spends days or weeks inside someone's unoccupied home, Rikor's benchmark is $250,000 on a Loss Discovered form.

The form choice matters. A Loss Sustained form covers a theft only if the loss both happened and was discovered during the same policy period, with a narrow window after expiration. A Loss Discovered form covers a theft found during the current policy period regardless of when the theft actually occurred. A homeowner who left during a flood remediation and returns a month later, then realizes a watch has not appeared since the restoration crew was there, is a loss discovered well after the event. The Loss Discovered form still responds. Loss Sustained may not.

Voda's dual-service model produces the most complex premium calculation in the cleaning cluster. You are not buying one program — you are buying two, and they are priced differently.

How general liability premium is built. General liability for a restoration and cleaning contractor is typically rated on gross receipts — a rate per $1,000 of revenue. The carrier estimates your annual revenue at policy inception and charges based on that estimate. At year-end, the carrier performs an audit — a reconciliation that compares the revenue you estimated against what you actually collected, then adjusts the premium up or down. That adjustment arrives as a lump-sum bill or refund a few months after the policy year closes.

A realistic example for a Voda franchisee. You estimate $300,000 in combined cleaning and restoration revenue when the policy starts. A strong year of storm-driven restoration calls pushes your actual revenue to $480,000 — a $180,000 difference. If your GL is rated near $7 per $1,000 of revenue, the audit adds about $1,260 on that difference. That is a single bill due after year-end.

How workers compensation premium is built. Workers' compensation is calculated using payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for each classification code, multiplied by your experience modification. The rate per $100 of payroll is set by the state's rating bureau — NCCI in most states — not by the carrier. The insurer applies the state's number and runs the same kind of year-end payroll audit that GL uses.

For Voda franchisees, the cleaning side of your payroll typically falls under NCCI code 9014 (Janitorial Services by Contractor), and restoration payroll under NCCI code 5610 (Water Damage Restoration). Those codes carry different state rates. A policy built on only NCCI 9014 will be corrected at year-end audit when the carrier discovers restoration payroll was miscoded. That correction arrives as a premium bill — not a claim denial. 

Misclassification is an audit exposure, not a coverage event.

The cost range. A Voda program including GL, auto, WC, professional liability, pollution liability, crime, bailee's, EPLI, and cyber for an early-stage franchisee commonly runs $15,000 to $28,000 per year. That range reflects specialty environmental market pricing for pollution and professional liability — standard carriers do not write CPL for restoration contractors. The specialty market does.

The cash-management point. Estimate your revenue and payroll close to reality at policy inception. If your restoration volume grows materially mid-year — as often happens after a regional weather event drives referrals — ask your carrier for a mid-term premium adjustment. That spreads the increase across your remaining installments instead of delivering it as a single lump sum when the year closes.

Voda's FDD is unusually comprehensive — it requires coverages most cleaning brands do not mention. The work for experienced operators is not filling obvious gaps but raising the limits the FDD set low and making sure each policy is built for restoration operations, not just adequate on paper. The recommendations below are Rikor's baselines for a newer franchisee. They scale up with revenue, crew size, and commercial work.

Bailee's coverage above $50,000 — sized to what you actually move. 

The FDD requires $50,000. A multi-day residential move-out, a commercial account with office equipment, or a client home with furniture and electronics in multiple rooms can produce a contents inventory that exceeds that on a single job. Operators running regular pack-outs or extended off-site storage should be looking at $100,000 or more, per occurrence.

Third-party crime at $250,000 on a Loss Discovered form. 

The FDD requires $100,000. For restoration crews who access homes while owners are displaced — sometimes for weeks — Rikor's benchmark is $250,000. Ask specifically for the Loss Discovered form. A crew rotation through a dozen jobs before a client notices a missing item is exactly the scenario where discovery timing matters.

CPL form review — confirm no mold carve-out. The FDD prohibits a pollution exclusion. That prohibition is only as strong as the form you bought. Some CPL forms use broad pollution language on the cover page and then quietly exclude mold or biological material in the definitions. Review the form, not just the certificate.

Professional liability form review — confirm no mold exclusion. The same verification applies on the professional liability side. The FDD requires PL at $1M/$2M for assessment and remediation errors. Check that the policy does not re-introduce a mold exclusion on the professional liability form.

EPLI above $100,000 as your crew grows. The FDD requires $100,000 — a starting point. Restoration work involves emergency calls, irregular hours, physically demanding conditions, and a workforce that turns over with the industry. 

Rikor's restoration benchmark is $250,000 for a startup, scaling to $500,000 at five to fifteen employees and $1,000,000 above that.

Inland marine equipment floater for off-premises equipment.

Air movers, commercial dehumidifiers, HEPA air scrubbers, water extraction units, and thermal imaging cameras are the tools of a restoration operation. The FDD requires equipment coverage exceeding $60,000. Standard business property covers equipment at a fixed location. An inland marine equipment floater covers the same equipment in transit, at job sites, and in vehicles — where your restoration equipment actually works.

Confirm the equipment coverage on your policy is an inland marine form, not a business personal property extension.

Umbrella — sized to your restoration exposure. Voda crews work inside occupied homes and commercial buildings where a single water event, mold claim, or serious bodily injury can produce a loss that exceeds the $1M/$2M general liability stack. Commercial property managers, HOAs, and general contractors who refer restoration work frequently require certificates showing $2M to $5M in total coverage. A commercial umbrella — which adds a layer on top of your GL, auto, and employers liability — is how you satisfy those certificates and protect against the severity restoration work actually carries. For a Voda franchisee starting primarily in residential work, a $1M umbrella is a reasonable baseline. For operators taking commercial accounts or property management referrals, $2M is the practical threshold.

Independent contractors liability endorsement on GL.

During surge periods — major storms, pipe-burst events — Voda franchisees often bring in 1099 labor for overflow restoration work. Confirm your general liability policy carries an independent contractors liability endorsement so work performed by those subcontractors is not excluded if they cause a loss. Any 1099 worker who cannot produce a current certificate of insurance at audit becomes your payroll exposure. Rikor's subcontractor compliance monitoring tool tracks those certificates in real time so a lapse surfaces before the next job, not after the audit. See how subcontractor compliance works →