Window cleaning business insurance: coverage and risks

What to take away

This is general information, not insurance or legal advice. Policy wordings, state rules and workers compensation requirements differ, so take advice from a licensed broker and read the actual policy documents.

The coverages a window cleaning company usually considers

General liability. Third-party injury and property damage. Most commercial customers want a $1 million per occurrence limit and a $2 million aggregate, and this is the certificate a facility manager asks to see.

Carriers that quote small trades include Next Insurance, Hiscox, Thimble, biBERK and The Hartford. Brokers such as Insureon and Simply Business price several policies at once.

Care, custody and control. Damage to the property you are actually working on. Standard liability often treats this separately from other property damage, and glass is the item at issue. Where it is offered, it usually arrives as an endorsement or a sublimit of $25,000 or less, priced on the glass you typically handle.

Workers compensation. Required once you have employees in nearly every state, and sometimes structured through a state fund. Classification is set by your state authority, not by your broker's preference.

Janitorial work is often coded 9014, where rates commonly run about $1.50 to $5 per $100 of payroll. Exterior cleaning at height is usually coded higher. California, New York, Washington and Ohio run state funds that publish their own rates.

Commercial auto. Personal auto policies commonly exclude business use. Carrying water and equipment makes the vehicle unambiguously commercial. Expect roughly $1,200 to $2,500 a year per van at $1 million of liability, less for an older vehicle and a clean driving record.

Inland marine, or tools and equipment. Your own gear, in transit and on site. General liability does not cover it. Many policies carry a minimum premium near $250, with rates set per $100 of insured value.

Umbrella or excess liability. Additional limits above the primary policies, often demanded by larger commercial contracts. A $1 million umbrella for a small contractor commonly costs $500 to $1,500 a year, and $2 million to $5 million limits scale up from there.

Surety or janitorial bonds. Not insurance. A separate instrument some customers require. Pricing typically runs 1% to 3% of the bond amount, so a $10,000 janitorial bond costs about $100 to $300 a year.

What a premium actually looks like

No two quotes match, but the shape of a quote is predictable. A one-person operation doing ground-level residential work in a low-rate state might see a general liability premium in the low hundreds a year for a one million dollar limit.

Add a lift, a second van and two employees, and the same broker may quote several thousand. Workers compensation on payroll is now in the number, and so is commercial auto.

Treat those as illustrations, not rates. Your own figure comes from the arithmetic below, applied to your class code and your state's published rate.

Workers compensation is the line you can estimate before you call anyone. Take your annual payroll, divide it by one hundred, multiply by the rate per hundred dollars of payroll your state authority publishes for your class code.

At $2 per $100 of payroll, a $180,000 payroll gives a base premium of $3,600.

That product is the base premium before experience modification. A clean three-year claims history pushes the modifier below one; a single serious claim can push it above. Modifiers for small contractors often land between 0.80 and 1.25.

General liability is usually rated on revenue, sometimes with a minimum premium. Ask the broker what the minimum is and what revenue band it covers, because a small company can pay the minimum and still be quoted as if it were larger. Minimums commonly sit between $500 and $1,500 a year.

Monthly billing, offered by Next Insurance and Thimble among others, spreads the cost across twelve payments. Paying annually on the same policy usually costs less.

What actually moves the price

Because these are the drivers, two window cleaning companies of identical revenue can receive very different quotes, and neither is being treated unfairly.

Reading the wording before the price

Six questions to ask the broker in writing. Save the answers with the policy.

The fifth question is where small companies lose claims. A condition requiring documented training or equipment inspection is a promise you made, and it is checked after the loss rather than before.

The cleaning industry hazard material from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration sets out the chemical and slip exposures such a condition usually addresses. If records exist only in memory, the condition is not met.

What the insurer is really assessing

An underwriter is trying to work out whether your company plans its work or improvises it.

Fall protection is the clearest signal. The fall protection guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration treats protection as arranged before work starts. Rope access technique and anchor selection are not something this article covers; those sit with CSA Z91 and Z271 and a certified trainer.

For suspended work in the United States, ANSI/IWCA I-14.1 is the window cleaning safety standard many contractors work to. The International Window Cleaning Association runs safety training and an annual convention, and its members are one place to ask which class code carriers use in your state.

A company that can show a written access policy, an equipment inspection log, and signed training records describes a different risk from one that cannot.

That documentation is also what a commercial customer asks for during vendor onboarding, so it does double duty. The ADA Guide for Small Businesses is worth having read for the same reason: obstructing an accessible entrance with equipment is both a liability exposure and a complaint waiting to happen.

Buying it sensibly

Describe the work accurately, including the worst job you take. A policy priced on routine ground-level work will not respond well to a lift job you did not mention.

Compare wordings, not premiums. Two quotes that differ on price usually differ on what they exclude.

Check the certificate requirements of the customers you want before you buy. Commercial vendor terms often specify limits and additional insured status, and buying to a limit below that means buying twice. Most ask for $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate; larger contracts sometimes ask for more and want a $1 million umbrella behind it.

Get three quotes on one description. Give every broker the same written scope, payroll figure and limits, or the quotes cannot be compared. Direct carriers such as Next Insurance and Hiscox, and brokers such as Insureon, are different channels on the same policy.

Review annually and at every change. New access method, new vehicle, first employee, new service line. Each of these can invalidate an assumption the quote was built on.

Where insurance sits in the wider picture

Insurance is one layer of a stack that also includes registration, local licensing, tax and employer obligations. Read it alongside the licensing and compliance guide rather than as a separate task, and check the specific permissions you need against the article on what licenses a window cleaning business needs.

Two decisions feed straight into the premium. What you buy and how you reach the glass, settled in the equipment and setup decisions.

And whether you have employees at all, which starts when you begin hiring reliable window cleaning staff and brings workers compensation with it.

Common questions

How much does window cleaning insurance cost?

There is no single number. A solo operator doing ground-level residential work may pay a few hundred dollars a year for general liability, while a crew running lifts and carrying payroll can pay several thousand once workers compensation is included.

Workers compensation moves that figure more than anything else. The same $100,000 of payroll costs about $1,500 at a $1.50 rate per $100 and about $6,000 at a $6 rate.

Get three quotes from brokers who write this trade, give all three the same accurate description, and compare the wordings side by side.

Do I need insurance before my first job?

Before you touch anyone else's property, yes. The first broken pane is the wrong moment to find out you were uncovered, and many customers will not let you start without a certificate.

Does my personal auto policy cover the van?

Almost certainly not for business use. Ask the question directly and get the answer in writing, because this is one of the most common uninsured exposures in mobile trades.

Are sole operators exempt from workers compensation?

It varies by state, and the exemption is often narrower than people assume. Ask your state's workers compensation authority about your own arrangement rather than relying on what another operator told you.