Salon and Spa Insurance Checklist

Licensed services decide the salon file

Texas Occupations Code ch. 1603 puts barbering and cosmetology under the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, where §1603.2101 licenses the individual practitioner and §1603.2201 licenses the establishment. An underwriter reads both.

What is performed on site, service by service, decides which market sees the submission. A license proves who may work in the suite. The service list proves what a policy answers for.

Aulona Insurance Group places Texas Business Insurance and writes personal care accounts: Salon and Spa Insurance.

The chair and the room are two policies

General liability answers a fall in the waiting area and the retail shelf, and it excludes the rendering of professional services, which is the work done in the chair. Professional liability answers the service itself.

By service, not by job title:

• Hair: cutting, color, relaxers, perms, extensions and weaves
• Skin: facials, waxing, chemical peels and body treatments
• Nails: manicures, pedicures, enhancements, and the sanitation practice behind them
• Lashes, brows, microblading, permanent makeup and body art, each rated on its own

General Liability Insurance covers the room and the shelf.

Injectables, lasers and medical direction

A package policy for a salon stops at the personal care class, and three groups of treatment sit outside it. Injectables, lasers and anything under medical direction leave the class entirely.

• Injectables of any kind, neurotoxins and dermal fillers included
• Laser and intense pulsed light treatments, hair removal among them
• Any treatment performed under a physician’s direction or protocol

A salon that adds one of those says so on the recorded call, because the file then leaves the agency’s package lines.

A booth renter insures its own chair

A salon owner’s policy answers the salon’s own operations, and a booth renter trading as an independent business sits outside it. Every rented chair carries its own general and professional liability.

Split the chairs before the call:

• Which chairs the salon staffs, and which it rents out
• A current certificate of insurance from each renter, showing that renter’s own general and professional liability
• The expiration date on each certificate
• What the booth agreement makes the renter carry, and whether the salon is named

A salon with renters works every list here twice, once for the room and once for each chair.

Stations, dryers and the retail shelf

Commercial property on a salon answers the fit-out and the equipment more than the building, and a leased suite leaves the build-out with the tenant. Business income belongs on the form, because a suite closed for repairs stops earning the day it closes.

Values in writing:

• The build-out the salon paid for: plumbing, shampoo bowls, mirrors, lighting, flooring
• Chairs, dryers, wax pots, steamers, sterilizers, lash tools and laundry equipment, at replacement cost
• Retail stock on the shelf, and product in a back room or storage unit
• The square footage, and whether the suite is owned or leased

Business Owners Policy Insurance carries that property and the liability together.

Payroll behind the chairs

A salon owner elects workers compensation or goes without it, since Texas Labor Code §406.002 leaves the coverage elective for most private employers in Texas, and the payroll behind that choice is what a market rates. Booth renters are not payroll.

• Head count split into W-2 staff, owners drawing a wage, booth renters and 1099 contractors
• Total annual W-2 payroll, the figure workers compensation rates on
• Who holds an individual license under §1603.2101, and when each expires
• Chemical reactions, burns and slips, with the date and cost of each claim

Workers Compensation Insurance is placed for employers that elect it.

Mobile work and the product run

A vehicle titled to the salon sits outside a personal auto policy, and a stylist who travels to clients creates the exposure even where the salon owns no car. An errand in a personal car is the salon’s exposure too.

• Each vehicle the salon holds title to, with its VIN and its use
• The name, license number and date of birth of each driver
• Whether stylists work weddings, events or house calls, and in whose vehicle
• Staff who fetch product or drop laundry in their own cars, which the form calls hired and non-owned

Commercial Auto Insurance answers a vehicle the salon owns or hires.

The lease and the certificates it demands

A salon lease fixes the tenant’s limits and names the landlord on the policy, and its dates drive every certificate the salon issues. An endorsement changes coverage, a certificate does not.

What the clause requires:

• The aggregate limit and the per-occurrence limit written into the lease
• Whether the landlord becomes an additional insured, whether subrogation is waived, and whether the wording must be primary and non-contributory
• The certificate holder’s name and address, and each reissue date
• Any professional liability limit the lease sets for the chairs

Texas Insurance Code ch. 1811 leaves a certificate as evidence of a policy and never an amendment to it: Certificates of Insurance in Texas.

Paperwork for the recorded call

Aulona Insurance Group opens a salon account on a recorded call with Luka Cenaj, the agency’s licensed principal, who goes through the licenses, the service list and the chairs.

On the table for that call:

• The legal entity, the trading name of the salon, and its federal tax ID
• The establishment license, and the individual license of every operator on site
• The date the suite opened, and prior policies with their dates
• The declarations pages in force, including the professional liability limit carried now
• A loss run, or three years of claims described in writing
• The lease, every booth agreement, and the certificates held for rented chairs

Nothing is quoted or bound ahead of that call, and the call can run in Albanian.

Where Aulona Insurance Group is not the right fit

Aulona Insurance Group places four package lines, which are the business owners policy, general liability, commercial property and professional liability, and several personal care accounts find no market on them.

• Hospitals and physician practices, where a medical spa under a physician usually lands
• Injectables, lasers and any treatment under medical direction, for the same reason
• Marijuana and cannabis businesses, CBD topicals included
• Night clubs, gas stations, towing operators and auto dealerships
• Used-goods dealers, non-durable goods wholesalers, livestock operations and pet breeders
• Roofing and siding, which no market on the package lines will take
• Anything that has to go to surplus lines

Commercial auto and liquor liability are taken up on the recorded call, not offered from this page. Life, health, Medicare and disability are not written at all.