What Insurance a Window Cleaner Should Carry, and How to Verify It

The three policies that actually matter

Three policies matter when you hire a window cleaning company: commercial general liability, workers' compensation, and commercial auto. General liability covers damage the crew does to your property and injuries to people who are not employees; $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate is the common limit for a residential cleaning contractor, and most commercial contracts require it. Workers' compensation pays medical bills and lost wages when a worker is hurt on your property, which matters most on ladder work such as gutter cleaning, solar panel cleaning, and holiday light installation. Commercial auto covers the truck, and this one gets skipped often: a personal auto policy typically excludes business use, so a crew driving to your address on a personal policy can be uninsured at the moment of a wreck. A fourth policy, inland marine or equipment coverage, insures the company's ladders and water-fed poles. That one protects the company, not you.

How to verify a certificate of insurance in ten minutes

Verification takes about ten minutes and follows five steps. First, ask for a certificate of insurance, the standard form being ACORD 25, and ask that the insurance agent send it to you directly, because a PDF forwarded by the contractor can be edited. Second, confirm the named insured on the certificate matches the legal business name on your estimate, not a similar-sounding one. Third, check the effective and expiration dates; policies run twelve months, and a certificate issued nine months ago may describe coverage that has since lapsed. Fourth, read the limits: general liability of at least $1 million per occurrence, and a workers' compensation line that is filled in rather than blank. Fifth, call the agent at the phone number printed on the certificate, not a number the contractor hands you, and ask whether the policy is active today. Reflekt Window Cleaning is fully insured and provides a certificate on request at (208) 453-6760.

Workers' compensation is the coverage that can reach your bank account

An uninsured worker injured at your house can become your financial problem. When a crew carries no workers' compensation, an injured worker's medical costs have one remaining place to go: a claim against the homeowner and the homeowner's liability policy. Many homeowners policies cap or exclude injuries to people performing work on the property, and some carriers non-renew after a claim of that type. Window cleaning puts people on ladders, on wet ground, and around second-story eaves, so the exposure is not theoretical. Idaho requires employers to carry workers' compensation for their employees, with limited exemptions for sole proprietors and certain corporate officers, and the Idaho Industrial Commission is the agency to confirm current requirements with rather than the contractor. If a company sends two or three people to your house and says it carries no workers' compensation, those workers are either misclassified or uncovered, and both answers land the risk on you.

The exclusions that make 'fully insured' smaller than it sounds

'Fully insured' describes owning a policy, not having every loss covered, and three exclusions surface repeatedly in this trade. The first is care, custody, and control: standard general liability commonly excludes damage to the specific property the contractor is working on, so a pane broken during cleaning can fall outside the policy even though that policy is real and active. The second is height. Some general liability policies written for exterior cleaning carry a height restriction endorsement capping work above a stated number of stories, which matters for gutter cleaning, roof-adjacent solar panel cleaning, and holiday light installation. The third is water and runoff. Pressure washing at $0.20 per square foot and soft-wash house washing at $0.18 per square foot move detergent and sediment toward storm drains, and some policies treat that under a pollution exclusion. Ask the agent whether all three apply and get the answer in writing before work starts.

Bonded is not insured, and the difference is large

Bonded and insured are different products, and bonded is usually the weaker of the two. A surety or janitorial service bond is a guarantee that pays a third party when the bonded business fails to perform or when an employee steals; the bonding company then seeks repayment from that business. Insurance absorbs the loss instead of lending against it. A bond does not pay for a broken window, a fall from a ladder, or damage to siding. Bond amounts are also small relative to the risk, with $10,000 janitorial bonds common, while general liability limits typically start at $1 million per occurrence. A company advertising 'bonded and insured' has told you nothing about limits, and 'bonded' by itself tells you nothing about liability coverage at all. Ask which policies exist, at what limits, with which carrier, and treat the phrase as marketing rather than a credential.

What Idaho requires, and what it does not

Idaho does not issue a trade license specific to window cleaning, which changes what is worth verifying here. Idaho's contractor registration requirements are aimed at construction work, and routine exterior cleaning generally falls outside them, so 'licensed' in a Treasure Valley window cleaning ad usually means a city or county business license rather than a trade credential. Insurance therefore carries more weight than licensing in this state, alongside two free lookups: search the business name in the Idaho Secretary of State business entity database to confirm the company legally exists under the name printed on the certificate, and contact the Idaho Industrial Commission regarding workers' compensation coverage. Neither takes more than a few minutes. This page is general information rather than legal or insurance advice, and policy language and state requirements change, so confirm specifics with a licensed Idaho agent or the relevant state agency before relying on them.

When verifying insurance is not worth your time

Some jobs do not justify the paperwork, and saying so is more useful than a blanket rule. On a single-story home with ground-floor exterior glass, the realistic worst case is a broken pane worth roughly $200 to $600, and the care, custody, and control exclusion means general liability probably would not cover that pane anyway. What protects you there is the company's willingness to write a check, which review history and years in business predict better than a certificate does. Demanding a workers' compensation certificate from a genuine solo owner-operator is also a mistake, because a sole proprietor with no employees may lawfully carry none, and refusing to hire on that basis screens out good small operators. Verification earns its ten minutes when the work involves height, when a crew rather than one person shows up, when the job exceeds roughly $1,000, or when a commercial or property-management contract requires additional insured status.