The licence is the foundation, not the whole picture
Every legitimate maid agency operating in Malaysia holds a licence issued under Act 246, which defines "recruiting activity" as acting as a paid go-between for an employer and a job seeker and makes doing that without a licence a criminal offence. That single requirement is what turns "a business that arranges maids" into something a regulator can investigate, discipline, suspend or shut down: a household dealing with a licensed agency has that structure standing behind the relationship in a way dealing with an unlicensed one does not.
The licence itself isn’t one uniform thing: Act 246 sets three categories with different permitted activities and different capital requirements behind them, and only two of the three reach foreign domestic worker placement at all. Knowing an agency is "licensed" is the first check, not the last one; which category it holds is the next.
What the Act regulates, and what it deliberately leaves open
Beyond licensing, Act 246 does two more things directly: it caps two specific fees a worker being placed may be charged, and it gives the licensing department authority to act against a licence holder for misconduct. Both are real, checkable facts, not general assurances, and both concern the worker’s side of the arrangement.
What the Act does not do is set, cap, or itemise what an agency may charge a household for its overall service, package, or placement fee. That gap is confirmed across every source this site has checked, and it’s deliberate rather than an oversight in the research: the law regulates a licensed intermediary’s conduct and the worker-side fee, not the household’s commercial price for the service. That’s exactly why comparing written, itemised quotes matters more here than in a price-capped market.
Where to go deeper
Each piece of this, the licence categories, verifying a specific agency against the public register, regional differences between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, and what to ask before you commit, has its own dedicated guide on this site. This page is the map; the others are the routes.