SERVPRO

SERVPRO runs more than 2,300 franchises and the largest disaster-response network in the trade. Crews handle water extraction, structural drying, smoke and soot cleanup, mold remediation, and biohazard work — 24 hours a day, at homes and at commercial buildings.

The 2025 SERVPRO franchise disclosure document requires more insurance than almost any restoration brand in this system. General liability at three million dollars per occurrence. Pollution, mold, and incidental lead and asbestos coverage at the same level. A Limited Service and Repair policy. Bailee and inland marine coverage for customer property. Cyber, employment practices, and workers' compensation that ignores state opt-outs. Those limits are not arbitrary. They exist because the National Account and Commercial Account clients who refer the largest jobs require them. Meeting the franchise agreement is one thing. Building a program that can actually accept that work — and protect the business you bought — is another.

The franchisor entity is Servpro Franchisor, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company with its principal office at 801 Industrial Boulevard, Gallatin, Tennessee 37066. That is the legal name that belongs on your certificate of insurance. The SERVPRO FDD goes a step further than most: it requires you to name Servpro Industries, LLC — the manager and certain affiliates and their officers, directors, employees, and agents as additional insureds as well. An additional insured is a person or company added to your policy so it also protects them. The standard construction is:

Servpro Franchisor, LLC and Servpro Industries, LLC (as manager), their parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, and their respective officers, directors, employees, and agents.

The 2025 FDD (Item 8) sets the following required coverages. A current certificate must be on file with SERVPRO at all times for each franchise, and cannot be canceled or materially changed except after 30 days' written notice.

Commercial General Liability at $3,000,000 per occurrence and $5,000,000 aggregate, written on an occurrence basis, with no professional liability exclusion. General liability (GL) covers bodily injury and property damage your operations cause a third party. The occurrence form means the policy responds based on when the loss happened, not when the claim is filed — important because restoration claims often surface long after the job. These limits stay the same even if you hold more than one license.

Pollution and Mold Liability — including incidental disturbance of lead and asbestos — at $3,000,000 per claim and $5,000,000 aggregate. This may be written on a claims-made basis. The certificate must specifically confirm coverage for pollution, mold, and incidental lead and asbestos disturbance.

Limited Service and Repair (LSR) Liability at $500,000 per occurrence and aggregate. LSR warrants the services and materials you provide to vendors that require a warranty of work — it is required to participate in National Account, Select National Account, and Commercial Account referrals. The FDD notes the LSR policy is only available through RRRG, the captive insurer SERVPRO's predecessor helped form. It does not cover bodily injury or property damage.

Commercial Automobile Liability at $1,000,000 combined single limit on each owned, non-owned, or hired vehicle.

Workers' Compensation classifying you as a restoration and cleaning service, covering all employees regardless of whether state law requires it. Workers' compensation (WC) pays an injured employee's medical bills and lost wages. If your state has no requirement, the FDD floor is $500,000 each accident, $500,000 each employee, and $500,000 policy limit. 

Employers Liability is required as a supplement — it answers lawsuits an injured worker brings outside the workers' compensation system. 

Employment Practices Liability (EPLI) is also required; it covers claims like wrongful termination, discrimination, and harassment.

Property, Casualty, Bailee, and Inland Marine coverage of at least $250,000 for customers' property in your care, custody, or control — whether stored at the customer's location, in transit, or in your warehouse. A bailee is someone who holds another person's property for a purpose. Property casualty coverage must also protect your office, equipment, and warehouse.

Data and Cyber-Security insurance in the type and amount SERVPRO recommends from time to time. Cyber covers a data breach or a fraudulent transfer.

The FDD also requires tail coverage for up to three years after transfer, non-renewal, expiration, or termination — the run-off layer that keeps you covered for claims filed after you leave the system. Deductibles may not exceed $10,000 per policy. Your insurance must be primary and non-contributory, meaning it pays first without asking the franchisor's policy to contribute.

This is the claim restoration franchisees fear most, and for good reason. You extract the water, set the drying equipment, hit the protocol readings, and sign off. Weeks later the homeowner opens a wall during a renovation and finds mold growing in the cavity. 

They name your business for the cost to remediate it — and sometimes for a family member's respiratory illness.

The problem is that a standard general liability policy treats mold as a pollutant and excludes it. Mold, fungus, sewage, and biological contamination are all written out of the standard GL form, even when the water came from a clean residential pipe. So the policy most franchisees assume covers their core service is exactly the policy that denies the mold claim.

SERVPRO's FDD closes this on purpose. It requires pollution and mold liability at $3,000,000 — the same high limit as the GL — because the franchisor understands that mold recurrence is the single largest completed-operations exposure a restoration crew carries. The certificate has to confirm the mold coverage by name. 

That requirement is doing real work. The job is to make sure the policy form you actually buy matches it, because some pollution forms use broad language up front and then quietly carve mold back out in the definitions.

A SERVPRO franchisee dried a finished basement after a supply-line failure. End-of-job moisture readings passed protocol and the homeowner signed off. Two months later, during a kitchen remodel, a contractor opened a shared wall and found active mold across two stud bays — moisture had been trapped behind insulation the meters never reached. An industrial hygienist tied it to the original loss. Remediation, air clearance testing, and rebuild came to $46,000, and the homeowner alleged the drying was negligent. The franchisee's general liability carrier pointed to the pollution exclusion and the mold exclusion and declined. The pollution and mold policy required by the SERVPRO FDD — at the $3M limit — responded and covered the loss. Without that policy in force, the $46,000 would have come out of the franchisee's pocket. Prevention: log moisture readings throughout the drying cycle with dated records, confirm the pollution form carries no mold carve-out, and verify the protocol reaches hidden cavities before sign-off.

A large water or fire loss is rarely just a drying job. To dry the structure and protect the contents, your crew moves the customer's belongings out of the affected area — furniture, electronics, documents, appliances, and valuables. On a big loss those items may sit in your warehouse for days or weeks while the structure dries. Franchisees call this a "pack-out," and it changes your legal position.

When the customer's property leaves their control and enters yours, you become a bailee — someone holding another person's property for a purpose, with a legal duty to return it in the condition you received it. Standard general liability does not cover property in your care, custody, or control. Standard commercial property covers your equipment at your location — not a customer's belongings stored temporarily in your warehouse. The gap between those two policies is exactly where pack-out losses fall.

SERVPRO's FDD requires bailee and inland marine coverage at a $250,000 minimum, and it specifically extends that coverage to property at the customer's site, in transit, and in storage. That is a serious requirement — many brands set the bailee floor far lower or leave it out. The question for an experienced operator is whether $250,000 matches the largest realistic inventory of customer property your crew might hold at one time. A full residential pack-out, or a commercial contents job, can run past that figure. The right limit is the value of the biggest single haul you could be holding — not the smallest.

This is the SERVPRO question that has no equivalent in residential-only restoration. The brand's value is its access to large commercial and catastrophe work — the National Account, Select National Account, and Commercial Account programs through which insurance carriers and large institutions refer their biggest losses. Those referral sources do not accept whatever certificate you happen to carry. They set their own insurance requirements, and you have to meet them before you get the job.

That is why the SERVPRO FDD requires the Limited Service and Repair policy and reserves the right to demand higher limits "commensurate with higher Gross Volume and larger jobs" on 30 days' notice. A franchisee whose program was built to the residential floor can be fully compliant with the franchise agreement and still be unable to accept a commercial account — because the account's certificate of insurance demand exceeds what the policy shows. The largest revenue in the SERVPRO model is gated behind the certificate.

SERVPRO's program carries the highest required limits in the restoration cluster, and the cost reflects both those limits and the specialty market that writes them. Understanding how the two For most contractors, pollution is a peripheral risk. For a restoration franchisee, it is central — and the gap in a standard general liability policy is wide. Beyond mold, restoration work involves sewage from category-three water losses, antimicrobial chemicals applied during remediation, and the disturbance of lead paint and asbestos when crews tear out materials in older structures. Every one of those is treated as a pollutant under a standard GL form, and every one is excluded.

The coverage written for this exposure is Contractors Pollution Liability (CPL) — the policy the SERVPRO FDD requires at the $3,000,000 level, extended to mold and incidental lead and asbestos. CPL covers bodily injury, property damage, and cleanup costs caused by pollutants released during your work, including after the job is completed. For a restoration contractor, it is not a secondary policy. It is the policy that responds to the majority of your worst-case claims.

The SERVPRO requirement that the certificate specifically confirm pollution, mold, lead, and asbestos coverage exists because a certificate that merely says "pollution liability" is not enough. Some forms exclude asbestos and lead entirely, or restrict mold to dispersal events and miss the most common scenario — mold that grows from a missed moisture pocket. The franchisor's specificity is a signal: read the form, not just the certificate.

biggest lines are priced and that both are trued up at year-end is what keeps an audit bill from being a surprise.

How general liability premium is built. GL for a restoration contractor is usually rated on gross receipts — a rate charged per $1,000 of revenue. The carrier estimates your annual revenue when the policy starts and bills on that estimate. At year-end the carrier runs an audit, a reconciliation that compares the revenue you estimated against what you actually collected and adjusts the premium up or down. That adjustment lands as a single bill or refund a few months after the policy year closes.

A realistic SERVPRO example. You estimate $400,000 in revenue at policy inception. A heavy storm season drives a run of large-loss referrals and you finish at $700,000 — a $300,000 difference. If your GL is rated near $9 per $1,000 of revenue, the audit adds about $2,700 on that difference. Restoration carries a higher rate than light residential trades because the claim severity is higher.

How workers' compensation premium is built. WC is calculated as payroll divided by 100, multiplied by your state's rate for each class code, multiplied by your experience modification. The per-$100 rate is set by your 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. Restoration payroll typically falls under NCCI code 5610. If you add crews for a large loss event and that payroll is miscoded or undisclosed, the carrier corrects it at the year-end audit. That correction is a premium bill — never a claim denial. 

Misclassification is an audit exposure, not a coverage event.

The cost range. A full SERVPRO program — GL and pollution at the $3M level, LSR, auto, WC, bailee and inland marine, property, EPLI, and cyber — commonly runs **$18,000 to $35,000 or more per year** for an established territory with crews. The high required limits and the specialty environmental market that writes pollution at $3M put SERVPRO at the top of the restoration cost range. Standard carriers do not write this program; the specialty market does.

The cash-management point. Estimate your revenue and payroll close to reality at policy inception. If a regional weather event drives a surge of large-loss work mid-year — exactly the SERVPRO pattern — ask your carrier for a mid-term premium adjustment that spreads the increase across your remaining installments instead of delivering it as one lump sum after the year closes.

SERVPRO's FDD is one of the most demanding in this system — the required limits already exceed what most restoration brands ask for. So the work for an experienced operator is less about filling missing coverages and more about scaling limits to the commercial work the brand feeds you and confirming each policy form actually delivers what the certificate claims. The recommendations below are Rikor baselines for a newer franchisee, calibrated to revenue, payroll, crew size, and work mix. They scale up as you grow.

Umbrella sized to large-account certificates. SERVPRO crews work inside occupied commercial buildings — hospitals, schools, office towers, multi-unit residential — where a single water or fire event can run into the high six figures, and serious bodily injury is possible. National Account and Commercial Account vendor agreements routinely require certificates showing $5,000,000 or more in total coverage. A commercial umbrella, also called excess liability, adds a layer of limit on top of your GL, auto, and employers liability. For a SERVPRO franchisee taking commercial referrals, an umbrella is not optional dressing — it is the layer that keeps one large loss inside your limits and the certificate that unlocks the largest jobs. A $1,000,000 umbrella is a floor for residential-leaning operators; $5,000,000 is the practical threshold once commercial accounts are in play.

Professional liability beyond the lead-paint endorsement. 

The SERVPRO FDD mentions a $250,000 professional liability endorsement available for EPA lead-paint testing. That floor is thin for the professional judgments a restoration crew actually makes — moisture assessment, drying timeline decisions, and remediation scope. Professional liability (also called errors and omissions, or E&O) covers a claim that you got the professional call wrong, even when nothing was physically damaged by accident. Rikor's restoration benchmark is $1,000,000 per claim and $1,000,000 aggregate, written so it carries no mold exclusion.

Bailee and inland marine sized to your biggest pack-out. 

The FDD requires $250,000. A full residential contents pack-out or a commercial job can exceed that on a single loss, and two pack-outs in the same warehouse stack. Operators running regular pack-outs should size the limit to the largest combined inventory they could realistically hold at one time.

EPLI scaled to crew size. The FDD requires EPLI but does not set a limit. Restoration is emergency-driven work with irregular hours and a workforce that turns over with the industry. Rikor's restoration benchmark is $250,000 for a startup, $500,000 at five to fifteen employees, and $1,000,000 above that, with third-party liability and a wage-and-hour sub-limit included.

Third-party crime at $250,000 on a Loss Discovered form. Restoration crews access homes and businesses while owners are displaced — sometimes for weeks. General liability excludes employee theft because dishonesty is not an accident. A commercial crime policy with a third-party endorsement covers theft of a customer's property by your employees, without requiring a criminal conviction. Rikor's benchmark is $250,000 on a Loss Discovered form, which covers a theft found during the current policy period regardless of when it occurred — the right form for a crew that rotates through many jobs before a missing item is noticed.

Inland marine equipment floater for off-premises equipment. Air movers, commercial dehumidifiers, HEPA scrubbers, water extraction units, and thermal cameras are the tools of the operation, and they live at job sites and in vehicles. Standard business property covers equipment at a fixed location. An inland marine equipment floater covers the same equipment in transit and on site — where it actually works. Size it to the replacement value of your fleet, typically $50,000 to $150,000 and up.

Independent contractors liability endorsement on GL.

During large-loss surges, SERVPRO franchisees bring in 1099 demolition and rebuild crews, and the FDD already requires uninsured-subcontractor endorsements. Confirm your general liability policy carries an independent contractors liability endorsement so subcontractor work is not excluded if it causes a loss. Any 1099 worker who cannot produce a current certificate at audit becomes your payroll exposure. See how subcontractor compliance works →