ORKIN

The Orkin franchise agreement requires general liability insurance written on an occurrence form, at $1,000,000 each occurrence and $2,000,000 in the aggregate. That general liability must include a Pesticide and Herbicide Applicators endorsement and a Limited Pollution Coverage endorsement. The agreement also requires commercial auto, workers' compensation with employers liability, property coverage, exterminators errors and omissions, employment practices liability, and termite warranty coverage.

The named insured on your certificate is your own legal business entity. Orkin Systems, LLC and others it designates must be named as additional insureds on a CG 20 29 form, with coverage written as primary and non-contributory by an A-rated carrier.

That satisfies your franchisor. Here is where the requirement ends and your real exposure as a full-service pest operator begins.

The franchisor entity is Orkin Systems, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company. Its principal business address is 2170 Piedmont Road NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30324. It is owned by Orkin, LLC, and its ultimate parent is Rollins, Inc. The 2025 franchise agreement (Item 8 and Section 13) sets out the following.

General liability at $1,000,000 each occurrence and $2,000,000 in the aggregate, written on an occurrence form — coverage triggered by when the harm happens, not when the claim is filed. The agreement requires the policy to carry a Pesticide and Herbicide Applicators endorsement, a Limited Pollution Coverage endorsement, contractual liability, products liability, completed operations, and fire legal liability. Personal and advertising injury must be at least $1,000,000.

Commercial auto for owned, hired, and non-owned vehicles at a $1,000,000 combined single limit, including in-transit pollution liability. A combined single limit is one shared pool for bodily injury and property damage.

Workers compensation at statutory limits, with employers liability at no less than $500,000. Workers' compensation pays an injured technician's medical bills and lost wages without fault; employers liability is the sister coverage that responds when an injured worker sues you outside that no-fault system.

Exterminators errors and omissions at no less than $1,000,000 combined single limit per claim. This is a financial-loss and professional-error coverage most pest agreements leave out — Orkin requires it.

Employment practices liability at no less than $1,000,000, including third-party coverage for the franchisor and defense costs.

Property insurance on an "All Risk" (Special Form) basis for your property and property of others in your care, and termite warranty coverage for property damage adequate to satisfy claims under termite guarantees you issue.

Your coverage must be primary and non-contributory — your policy pays first. Orkin Systems, LLC must be named additional insured on a CG 20 29 form. The carrier must hold an AM Best rating of "A" or better, deductibles may not exceed $10,000, and certificates are due before opening and at each renewal.

This is the defining catastrophic claim for an Orkin franchise, and it is the one the agreement works hardest to address. Termite work is not a one-time spray. You inspect, you treat, you issue a written guarantee, and the customer relies on that guarantee for years. If termites are not actually eradicated, the damage keeps going inside walls and framing — and a customer who later finds rotted joists or a sagging floor will trace it straight back to your treatment.

A failed termite treatment is several claims at once. It is a professional error — you assessed and treated, and the work did not perform as promised. That is what your required exterminators errors and omissions coverage exists for. It can also be a completed operations property damage claim under general liability. And it triggers your termite warranty coverage, the line Orkin requires precisely because termite guarantees create real financial obligations.

Here is the trap. These three lines must be coordinated. A termite-failure claim that falls between the E&O, the completed-operations GL, and the warranty coverage gets argued among them — or excluded by each pointing at the other. Confirm your E&O actually covers faulty-workmanship financial loss and not only design errors, and confirm your termite warranty limit reflects the real cost of structural repair, not a token figure.

The second exposure comes from how Orkin actually works inside a home. Your technicians treat kitchens, baths, utility rooms, and garages, and they place baits and monitoring devices on surfaces where people prepare food. A bait station near a pantry, a treatment along a kitchen baseboard, residue on a counter a customer wipes a few hours later — each is a path to a contamination claim.

A customer who believes a treatment tainted food, or left residue where they cook, has a property damage claim and a possible bodily injury claim. In insurance terms this is a chemical claim, and a standard general liability policy carries a pollution exclusion that removes bodily injury and property damage caused by the discharge or dispersal of a contaminant. Most carriers treat a pesticide as a contaminant.

This is where Orkin's agreement is smart and where its limit matters. The required Pesticide and Herbicide Applicators endorsement and Limited Pollution Coverage endorsement are written to give the GL some answer to a pesticide claim. But "Limited" is the operative word — these endorsements often cap the pollution coverage well below the policy's main limit and narrow what they respond to. Confirm what your endorsement actually covers for indoor surface and food contamination, and how low its sublimit is, before you assume a kitchen claim is handled.

Orkin's service line includes wildlife. Removing raccoons, squirrels, bats, and rodents is a different hazard from spraying, and it creates exposures a spray-only policy was never written to handle. Exclusion and removal work means cutting into roofs, soffits, and crawlspaces, handling animals that bite and scratch, and leaving behind sealed entry points a customer relies on.

Two claim types follow. The first is property damage during the work — a technician opens a soffit or cuts a vent and water or pests get in afterward, or the repair fails and the animal returns. The second is bodily injury — an animal bites a technician or a member of the household, or a customer alleges illness from droppings disturbed during removal. The property damage piece runs through general liability and completed operations; the bite to your own technician runs through workers' compensation.

The point is that "pest control insurance" written generically may not anticipate animal handling at all. If your franchise does meaningful wildlife work, confirm your general liability does not exclude animal-related claims and that your completed-operations coverage answers a failed exclusion repair months later, the same way it must answer a failed termite treatment.

This exposure points inward, at your own crew, and Orkin's chemistry makes it concrete. A technician mixes and applies termiticides, runs heat treatments at high temperatures, and handles concentrate day after day. Over a season that is repeated dermal and respiratory contact, plus burn and heat-stress risk from the heat-treatment equipment.

When a technician is hurt or sickened on the job, that is a workers compensation matter. Workers' compensation pays their medical care and lost wages without anyone proving fault. The sister coverage on that same policy is employers liability, which responds when an injured technician sues you outside the no-fault system — alleging, for example, that you failed to provide proper protective equipment for chemical handling or heat work.

Orkin's agreement sets employers liability at a $500,000 minimum, which is lower than the $1,000,000 many agreements require. For a crew handling termiticides and running heat treatments, that floor is worth a careful look. Confirm your employers liability limit is sized to a serious chemical or heat-injury claim, not just to the agreement's minimum.

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.

General liability for a pest control business is usually rated on your revenue, sometimes on payroll. The carrier estimates your exposure when the policy starts and reconciles it at an audit — the carrier's year-end review that compares the revenue or payroll you estimated against what you actually did, then adjusts the premium up or down. Your required exterminators errors and omissions coverage is rated alongside it, and for a full-service Orkin operation the termite and warranty work is a meaningful part of that rating.

Workers' compensation is priced with a formula: your payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for the pest control classification (NCCI code 7720), multiplied by your experience modification. The rate per $100 of payroll is set by your state's rating bureau, not the carrier — the insurer applies the state's number and runs the same year-end payroll audit. That rate varies widely by state.

A simple payroll-basis example. Say you estimate $300,000 in payroll when the policy starts and finish the year at $400,000 after adding termite crews. At a pest control rate near $2.43 per $100 of payroll, the audit adds about $2,430 on that $100,000 difference. General liability runs the same way on revenue. Both usually arrive as a single lump-sum bill a few months after the policy year closes.

Orkin's agreement already does more than most by requiring a pesticide endorsement, exterminators errors and omissions, employment practices liability, and termite warranty coverage. The work for experienced operators is to make those required policies real — adequately sized and coordinated — and to raise the limits the agreement set low. The recommendations below are baselines for a newer franchisee, calibrated to your revenue, payroll, service mix, and how much termite and commercial work you take on.

A pollution program that is more than "Limited." The agreement requires a Limited Pollution Coverage endorsement on your general liability. That endorsement often carries a low sublimit and a narrow trigger. For a brand applying termiticides indoors and around foundations, look hard at whether a standalone contractors pollution liability policy — covering pesticide drift, indoor contamination, and third-party bodily injury at $1,000,000 each occurrence and aggregate — belongs alongside the limited endorsement, especially as your chemical volume grows.

Exterminators E&O confirmed for faulty-workmanship financial loss. The agreement requires E&O at $1,000,000, which is the right limit. Confirm it actually responds to a failed treatment that causes financial loss, not only to written-advice errors, and that no endorsement has stripped out the faulty-workmanship piece. For a termite operation this is the coverage standing behind your guarantee.

Employers liability above the $500,000 floor. The agreement's minimum is low for a crew handling termiticides and running heat treatments. A serious chemical or heat-injury suit can exceed $500,000 in defense and damages. The standard worth carrying is $1,000,000.

Commercial crime with third-party coverage at $250,000. The agreement does not require it. Your technicians have unsupervised access to customer interiors — kitchens, garages, and commercial spaces during off-hours. Third-party crime coverage protects against employee theft from a customer's property — a different insuring agreement than standard crime coverage, which protects only the business itself. The standard for this operation is $250,000.

Cyber confirmed at the recommended $1,000,000. The agreement recommends cyber at $1,000,000, which is above the home-services norm. Confirm your policy includes social engineering and ransomware coverage, not just a breach-notification limit, and watch the two-year tail requirement if it is written claims-made.

A commercial umbrella driven by your commercial reach. An umbrella adds a layer of limit above your general liability, auto, and employers liability. The agreement recommends $2,000,000 following form. Orkin's commercial accounts — restaurants, warehouses, and property managers — routinely require certificates of $2,000,000 to $5,000,000, and a single bad outcome on a fleet route or a large commercial site can exceed a $1,000,000 stack. Size the umbrella to the commercial contracts and fleet you actually run, rather than treating it as optional dressing.