Complete Policy Forms List

How To Read a Car Insurance Policy

In Part 1 we learned that what is commonly known as an "insurance policy" is actually a collection of mix-and-match boilerplate documents known as 'policy forms'. The insurance company asssembles these, staples them together and thats your policy. Your next door neighbor might have the same company but different documents making up their policy. Generally the exact content of the policy depends on where you live and what coverages you personally purchased.

In Part 2 we delved a bit into how policy forms come into being, how they are named and other fascinating details (OK it was pretty dry... but we needed the details to set up a payoff later in this series).

Now its time to look at an actual example of a policy - breaking it out into its collection of forms - so you can see how the policy is constructed. Once thats done you'll be able to click on links for each form and we'll break down what is happening and what is being said in each. We will use the industry-standard ISO forms (we covered what that was in Part 2). You will be able to take your own forms and compare them to the generic standard...

In fact, thats where the real benefit is to this dreary exercise: Some car insurance companies write up their own custom forms. You could find gaps or unusual restrictions that you would never have guessed existed, had you not been able to look at a benchmark for comparison.