MR. HANDYMAN

The Mr. Handyman franchise disclosure document requires general liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence (including products and completed operations and personal and advertising injury) and $2,000,000 aggregate, commercial auto at a combined single limit up to $2,000,000 but no less than $1,000,000, workers' compensation regardless of state requirement, and cyber liability at $500,000 per claim and in the aggregate.

The named insured on your certificate is your own legal business entity. Mr. Handyman SPV LLC is the franchisor. It must be named as an additional insured, with a waiver of subrogation, on all required liability policies, and your coverage must apply as primary and non-contributory — your policy responds first, before any coverage the franchisor carries. Combined single limit means one auto limit applies to any mix of bodily injury and property damage in a single accident. All policies must be written by a carrier rated A.M. Best A-VIII or better. The FDD also recommends — but does not require — an environmental policy covering pollutants including mold.

That is what the agreement establishes. Here is what a 500-service repair operation actually faces — starting with the trade your techs were not supposed to perform.

The franchisor entity is Mr. Handyman SPV LLC, a Delaware limited liability company organized November 13, 2020, with its principal business address at 1010 North University Parks Drive, Waco, Texas 76707. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Neighborly Assetco LLC — part of the Neighborly family of home-service brands. The 2025 franchise disclosure document, Item 8, sets out the following required coverages.

General Liability at $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, including products and completed operations and personal and advertising injury. Products and completed operations covers harm caused by your finished work after you have left the job — critical for a repair business whose failures often surface later.

Commercial Auto Liability at a combined single limit in the amount the franchisor specifies, up to $2,000,000 but no less than $1,000,000, on each owned, non-owned, or hired vehicle used in the business.

Workers Compensation regardless of whether your state requires it, with minimum coverage as required by state law where applicable. Workers' compensation pays an injured tech's medical bills and lost wages. Its sister coverage, Employers Liability, responds when an injured worker sues the employer claiming the employer's negligence contributed to the injury.

Cyber Liability at $500,000 per claim and in the aggregate, for financial losses from unauthorized access, data loss or corruption, privacy and data-security breaches, misdirected funds, virus transmission, denial of service, and loss of income from network-security failures. This is a required coverage in the Mr. Handyman FDD.

All required liability policies must name Mr. Handyman SPV LLC, and any and all parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates the franchisor designates, as additional insureds with a waiver of subrogation. Coverage must be primary and non-contributory. The franchisor may designate a single source for some coverage and may modify the required limits by written notice. The FDD additionally recommends an environmental insurance policy covering pollutants including mold.

Mr. Handyman markets more than 500 services — carpentry, drywall, installation, seasonal maintenance, light plumbing, and light electrical. That breadth is the brand's strength and its central coverage risk. The more trades a tech touches, the more often a "simple repair" lands in work that legally required a licensed plumber or electrician your business does not hold.

Your general liability policy assumes you operate within your license. When a tech crosses into licensed-trade work — reworking a supply line, touching the panel, running a new circuit — the carrier has an argument that the loss arose from unlicensed work. Some policies carry a classification limitation or a professional services carve-out that removes coverage for work outside the scope you disclosed. The claim is not denied because the repair was poor. It is questioned because the work belonged to a trade the policy assumed you were not performing.

Across 500 services, this happens more often than at any other handyman brand simply because the menu is larger. The protection is to know which tasks in your state require a license, route those to a licensed subcontractor, and confirm your general liability covers — rather than excludes — liability arising from your subs.

A tech across 500 services touches a lot of work that local code governs — railings, stairs, decks, structural fastening, electrical, gas connections. Most jobs are routine. But when a repair does not meet code — a railing fastened below the required strength, a step built to the wrong rise, an electrical connection that fails inspection logic — and something goes wrong, the building code question moves to the front of the claim.

General liability is built for accidental property damage and bodily injury, not for the cost of bringing non-compliant work up to code. The standard policy will not pay to fix work that simply does not meet code. And some policies carry a building-code or ordinance exclusion that can be invoked when a code violation is part of the chain that caused the loss. The damage might be a genuine accident, but the carrier can point to the code failure as the reason the work should not have been done that way.

The protection is partly operational — build to code, pull permits where required, and pass inspection — and partly coverage. Confirm your policy does not carry an aggressive building-code exclusion that would leave you exposed on exactly the higher-risk structural work where code matters most.

Mr. Handyman is the one brand in this cluster whose FDD explicitly recommends an environmental policy covering pollutants including mold. That is not boilerplate. The franchisor put it there because water-damage and mold losses are a real and recurring exposure in repair work — a plumbing fixture reset that weeps, a roof or window repair that lets water in, a drywall patch over a damp cavity.

Here is how the coverage actually breaks down. Accidental water damage to the customer's other property — flooring, cabinets, the ceiling below — is generally the kind of sudden, accidental loss general liability is built to cover, and it falls under completed operations when it traces to your tech's work. The gap is mold. The standard general liability policy contains a **mold and fungus exclusion**, and when moisture from a repair sits long enough for mold to grow, that exclusion can block the mold-remediation portion of the claim — frequently the most expensive line item. That is precisely the gap the FDD's environmental recommendation is pointing at.

To close it, add the environmental policy the FDD recommends, or at minimum a mold endorsement to the general liability policy, so a mold claim that traces to a water-related repair is covered. And confirm your completed-operations coverage responds to water damage that surfaces after the job closes — repair-related leaks rarely show up the same day.

A Mr. Handyman tech is regularly alone in a customer's home for hours, moving across rooms while working a repair list — exactly the setting where a customer later reports a missing watch, a piece of jewelry, or cash. Most jobs end without incident. But the in-home, unsupervised access is real, and the brand's emphasis on multi-hour repair visits raises the exposure relative to a quick service call.

General liability does not cover employee theft. Theft by your own tech is dishonesty, not an accident, and the standard policy excludes it. The Mr. Handyman FDD does not require a bond or a crime policy, so this protection is yours to add. The right product is a third-party commercial crime policy with a theft-of-customer-property endorsement — third-party meaning it covers theft of the customer's property, not just your own. A crime policy generally pays without requiring a criminal conviction, and it does not seek to recover the money from you afterward. That is the key difference from a fidelity bond, which often pays only after a conviction and then bills your business back — leaving you exposed on the most common claim, a credible accusation with no charge.

Rikor's benchmark for a brand whose techs work alone in homes for extended visits is a third-party crime policy at $250,000. If you carry one, ask for it on a Loss Discovered form, which covers a theft found during the policy period even if it began earlier — useful when a customer notices a missing item days after the visit, or after you have switched carriers. Keep this separate from any license or permit bond your state requires to hold a contractor license; those are unrelated to theft coverage.

This is where the brand's breadth meets the year-end bill. Workers' compensation is priced by classification code, and each code carries its own rate. Carpentry, drywall, light plumbing, and installation do not all rate the same. When techs move across 500 services, the carrier has to decide how to classify their payroll — and that decision drives the premium.

Two things are worth understanding. First, the rate. Workers' compensation premium is your payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for each class code, multiplied by your experience modification — a factor based on your claims history. The per-$100 rate 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. The carrier applies that rate; it does not invent it.

Second, the audit. Workers' compensation is auditable. At the end of the policy year, the carrier reviews your actual payroll — and how it split across classification codes — against what you estimated at the start. If your techs spent more time in a higher-rated trade than you disclosed, the audit can reclassify that payroll and adjust the premium upward. That is not a claim denial. It is a year-end billing adjustment that reconciles what you actually did against your estimate. The fix is disclosure at policy inception: describe the real 500-service mix to your carrier so the codes are set correctly from the start, and keep payroll records that show how time was actually split across trades.

Your premium depends on your state, your payroll, your revenue, your service mix, and your claims history. What you can control is understanding how the number is built — and preparing for the part that arrives after the year ends.

General liability and workers' compensation 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. It can move either direction — overestimate, and you get money back.

General liability for a handyman contractor is usually rated on gross receipts — a rate per $1,000 of revenue — with payments to 1099 subcontractors who cannot show a certificate added to the base. Workers' compensation is rated on payroll: payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state bureau's rate for each class code, multiplied by your experience modification.

A worked example on the revenue side. Say you estimate $220,000 in revenue when the policy starts — a reasonable figure for a single-territory Mr. Handyman operation. You add a tech and a steady commercial account mid-year and close at $540,000, a $320,000 difference. If your general liability is rated at roughly $9 per $1,000 of revenue, the audit adds about $2,880 in premium. That bill usually arrives as one lump sum a few months after the policy year closes.

Mr. Handyman's FDD covers the core well — required completed operations, a required $500,000 cyber policy, and a recommended environmental/mold policy. The gaps lie in the base-policy exclusions the FDD does not address and the coverages it leaves silent. The recommendations below are Rikor's baselines, calibrated for a newer franchisee and scaled by revenue, payroll, and service mix. A two-tech residential operation and a six-tech operation with commercial accounts sit at different points on every line.

Environmental / mold coverage — the FDD recommends it; carry it. The FDD recommends an environmental policy covering pollutants including mold, and that recommendation is well-founded. At minimum, add a mold endorsement to the general liability policy so a mold claim that traces to a water-related repair is covered, rather than blocked by the standard mold and fungus exclusion.

Independent Contractors Liability — confirm no subcontractor exclusion. Across 500 services, you will use licensed 1099 trade subs for plumbing and electrical work. A subcontractor exclusion on your general liability would remove coverage for liability arising from a sub's work — exactly the licensed-trade exposure you bring subs in to handle. Confirm the exclusion is not present and that your GL extends to your subcontractors.

Care, custody, and control endorsement. The FDD does not address the CCC exclusion, which removes coverage for a customer's property in your tech's control during a job. Add a CCC endorsement so the policy can respond to damage to the customer's belongings your tech was handling.

Third-party crime at $250,000, Loss Discovered form. The FDD is silent on crime. Your techs work alone in homes for extended visits. General liability excludes employee theft. Carry a third-party commercial crime policy at $250,000 with a theft-of-customer-property endorsement, on a Loss Discovered form, so a loss found after the visit or after a carrier switch is still covered.

Employers Liability at $1,000,000. The FDD requires workers' compensation but does not state separate employers-liability limits. Employers Liability responds when an injured tech sues the employer for negligence. Rikor's benchmark is $1,000,000 each accident, each employee, and policy limit — confirm your policy carries it.

Contractors Errors & Omissions, exposure-gated. For a brand spanning 500 services, including light remodeling and installation, Contractors E&O at $1,000,000 per claim and aggregate covers faulty workmanship that GL's "your work" exclusion leaves out and judgment errors that cause financial loss. Review it as project sizes or commercial work grow; a pure small-repair residential operation may not need it yet.

Inland marine for tools and equipment. Your auto policy covers the van, not the tools inside it. Inland marine — an equipment floater — covers tools at job sites, in transit, and in the vehicle, on an actual cash value basis. A 500-service van carries a meaningful tool investment; size the limit to what your techs actually carry.

Cyber — verify the required $500,000 includes social engineering. The FDD already requires $500,000 of cyber, so it is in your stack. Confirm the policy includes social-engineering and funds-transfer-fraud coverage, since fraud-induced wire transfers are the most common small-business cyber loss.

Umbrella — reason from your worst realistic loss. The FDD does not require an umbrella, but lets you use one to satisfy required limits. Whether you need a true excess layer is a severity question. Across 500 services, the realistic worst case is real: a fire from electrical work, a structural failure that injures someone, a serious water loss in a multi-unit building, or a highway auto loss — any of which can exceed a $1,000,000 general liability limit. The umbrella becomes more important as you take commercial accounts that require $2,000,000 or higher certificates, or as job size and crew grow. Reason from your actual work: when a single incident across that wide menu could blow through your primary limit, the umbrella is the layer that keeps one loss from reaching the business you built.