What does bonded and insured mean for a cleaning company?

Insured means you carry liability insurance for injury and damage you cause. Bonded usually means a janitorial bond that pays the client if your employee steals from them. Most commercial cleaning contracts want both.

Is a janitorial bond the same as a surety bond?

Not in the way a license or performance bond is. Those guarantee you will meet an obligation, and the surety recovers from you after paying. A janitorial bond is closer to crime coverage for the client’s benefit.

Do I need one if my employees are background checked?

The client decides, and background checks rarely replace the bond in a written contract. They may help the price of a crime policy.

Can you check the insurance requirements I was sent?

Yes. Paste them into our free COI Requirements Decoder, pick your type of business, and it explains each requirement, flags what is often missing and lists the lines to quote, without the text leaving your browser. One button then asks a licensed agent to quote what it found.

The owner of a commercial cleaning company in a navy polo with a ring of keys and an access badge, beside a janitorial cart in an empty office corridor at night

My cleaning client requires a janitorial bond. What is it, and is crime coverage the same thing?

A janitorial bond pays your client if one of your employees steals from them. It is not liability insurance, which is written for injury and property damage and not for theft by your own staff. Third-party crime coverage on a crime policy answers the same loss, and a client asking for a bond will often accept it if the limit matches and it covers theft from clients’ premises.

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Bond, crime policy and liability, side by side

	Janitorial bond	Crime policy with client coverage	General liability
Pays for	Theft from a client by your employee	Theft from a client by your employee, plus your own losses if included	Injury and property damage you cause
Who it protects	The client	You and the client	You, and additional insureds
Theft by staff	Yes	Yes	Not written for it
Damage to what you clean	No	No	Limited; property in your care is excluded unless added
What to send the client	The bond or a bond certificate	A certificate showing the crime limit	The ACORD 25

Pays for
Janitorial bond
Theft from a client by your employee
Crime policy with client coverage
Theft from a client by your employee, plus your own losses if included
General liability
Injury and property damage you cause
Who it protects
Janitorial bond
The client
Crime policy with client coverage
You and the client
General liability
You, and additional insureds
Theft by staff
Janitorial bond
Yes
Crime policy with client coverage
Yes
General liability
Not written for it
Damage to what you clean
Janitorial bond
No
Crime policy with client coverage
No
General liability
Limited; property in your care is excluded unless added
What to send the client
Janitorial bond
The bond or a bond certificate
Crime policy with client coverage
A certificate showing the crime limit
General liability
The ACORD 25

The detail

A janitorial or business services bond pays the client for theft of its money or property by the bonded business’s employees, up to the bond amount.
Kevin Kelsey, agency placement experience
Some janitorial bonds pay only after the employee is convicted, or limit what counts as proof of theft; crime policies with client coverage vary in the same way.
Kevin Kelsey, agency placement experience
Property manager vendor packets for cleaning and maintenance commonly ask for a bond or third-party crime coverage of $10,000 to $50,000.
Kevin Kelsey, agency placement experience

What this means for you

Read the amount and the wording. A packet asking for "a janitorial bond or third-party crime coverage of $25,000 covering theft of tenant and owner property" accepts either, at that figure, if it reaches tenants as well as the owner.
Ask how it pays. A bond that needs a criminal conviction pays slowly or not at all on a theft nobody prosecutes. Ask before you buy the cheapest one.
Bonded does not cover breakage. Damage to the floor you were treating is a care, custody and control question on your liability policy, not a bond question.
Keys change the question. Clients who give your crew keys or alarm codes after hours are the ones who ask. Expect it on every office and property management contract.

Go deeper on any of these

Need this handled?

Reading about it and having it handled are different jobs, and the second one is ours. We place the accounts other brokers decline — claims history, a cancellation, an unusual operation, a business nobody wants to underwrite twice — and we will tell you when the policy you already have is the right one. Tell us the situation and a licensed human replies the same business day.