Commercial Cleaning Business Insurance Guide: Introduction

Learn what you need to know about business insurance for cleaning services. This insurance protects various types of businesses and sometimes is called insurance for small cleaning business, home cleaning insurance, janitor insurance (including janitor liability insurance), window cleaning insurance or laundry business insurance.

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Why is it important to protect your business with liability insurance?

It does not matter what type of cleaning services you do. The truth is that you have many risks awaiting you – potential damages to other people’s property (e.g. equipment, electronics, art, collection items and expensive items), along with damages and scratches to the building itself. An additional danger is a potential injury risk – such as when somebody slips on a wet floor.

Professional liability insurance for cleaning or janitor services is the most essential part of your protection. Below are some examples from various industries. Do you recognize some of these dangers?

 

Home Cleaning Liability Office Cleaning Liability / Janitorial Liability Window Cleaning Liability Drycleaning Business liability Laundromat Business Liability
 

  • Damage to other people’s property
  • Damage of electronics, collections and art items
  • Disappearing jewelry
  • Throwing away valuable items
 

  • Damages to the office
  • Throwing away important documents
  • Office staff falling on a slippery surface that is being cleaned
  • Forgetting to lock the door resulting in a breach of security
 

  • Dropping items
  • Damaging window surface
  • Damaging various building elements
 

  • Damaging people’s clothes and drycleaning
  • Loosing customers’ items
  • Mixing up items from different customers
  • Being a victim of theft
 

  • Damaging people’s clothes (e.g. delicate items being damaged while tumbling)
  • Colour transfer on items while they are washed
  • Being a victim of theft when customers leave their items unattended

These are just a few examples justifying insurance for cleaning and janitorial businesses. If there is one insurance type you should be considering, it is liability insurance for your services.

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Commercial Cleaning Business Insurance Basics

When getting a cleaning business insurance quote, you need to consider various risks that your cleaning, janitorial, laundromat or dry-cleaning business may face. We have compiled an overview of all possible insurance types that you might need.

The first one, commercial professional liability for your cleaning services, we have already discussed, so let us explore other ones.

Insurance Brief description Do I need it? Example
 
Commercial Professional Liability
As mentioned above, liability protection for your commercial cleaning services is the most important one as it protects you from the risks you face when you or your team provide cleaning services (e.g. damaging somebody’s property, being the cause of somebody falling on a slippery floor, etc.) Always
  • Breaking a precious vase when cleaning up a home.
  • Throwing away important documents.
  • Damaging equipment when wiping dust.
 
Commercial Car Insurance
You need this insurance if you have one or more vehicles that you or your staff members use to get to the client’s site. Should you have more than five vehicles, you will need a fleet insurance. Find out more about fleet insurance here. Sometimes Your staff has an accident when driving in your company’s vehicle to the client’s office for regular cleaning.
 
Group Insurance/ Personal Injury Insurance
If you have several cleaning staff members or janitors working for you, you might want to consider getting group insurance – a combination of health benefits, life insurance, disability insurance and, potentially, some other insurance coverages (various packages are available on the market). Should you be interested in this insurance type, please click here to get a group insurance quote.
Personal Injury insurance for cleaning businesses only covers some of the medical services you might need after a work-related injury.
Sometimes A cleaning staff member slips on a floor and injuries him/herself.
 
Commercial Property Insurance
Commercial property insurance for cleaning services covers all unexpected damages to the buildings which you or your cleaning staff might cause while cleaning.
Some of those damages can be quite costly, especially if you are dealing with high end office spaces.
Sometimes The floor cleaning/polishing machine is not working properly and has damaged an expensive marble floor.
 
Commercial Building Insurance
If your cleaning business, drycleaning service or laundromat owns the building it is operating from, you will need this insurance to protect the building. Rarely Consequences of fire or flooding in the laundromat building that your company owns.

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Average Rates on Insurance for Small and Large Cleaning Business

Insurance rates for different cleaning businesses vary considerably. Here are some examples of cleaning service insurance costs for various scenarios. Remember that this is just a ball park – please get a quote to receive rates that are tailored to your particular janitorial business or cleaning services.

  Solo Cleaning Person Small Cleaning Team Growing Cleaning Business
Business size Revenue under $100,000 annually Revenue between $100,000 and $500,000 annually Revenue between $500,000 and $1,000,000 annually
Amount of liability coverage $1,000,000 liability $2,000,000 liability $5,000,000 liability
Amount of equipment coverage (for your tools and equipment) $5,000 tools $10,000 tools $10,000 tools and $15,000 equipment
Estimated cleaning services insurance premiums $500/year $750/year $1,000/year

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Home and House Cleaning Services Insurance

If you provide home and house cleaning services, insurance should be on your mind. Some clients will ask for it, and without having it, you risk losing your job with that client. Others will not ask for it, but you would better off having it. Imagine breaking a large vase, damaging the Bohemian crystal or dropping a floor stand filled with a collection of wines? Costs for these items can add up to thousands of dollars.

Do you really want to be on the hook for this amount?

Probably not.

Getting a home and house cleaning insurance policy will save you a lot of headaches in the future. The same applies if you are a freelance janitor or window cleaning professional.

Our experienced insurance professionals will inform you about possible insurance options and will find you the lowest insurance rate.

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