How To Read a Car Insurance Policy

Reading Your Car Insurance Policy

Of all the individual policy forms that together make up your complete car insurance policy, this one is the core of it all. Generally all of the other forms in your policy either extend or restrict the coverages given in this form.

The form we are using as our example is the actual ISO car insurance policy form and the benchmark standard for most U.S. states. That means you can use this form as a reference against your own auto insurance policy to see how it compares to the generic, universal standard.

What we are going to do is read the form front to back and do our best to translate it into English for you. Its so big we had to split the discussion up into multiple pages, but if auto insurance forms weren't long and complicated we wouldn't need to write this guide in the first place :-).

So here we go: From this point forward, read along on the sample policy form we have provided. Each section of the Personal Auto Policy Form has its own page, linked below:

• Definitions
• Part A - Liability Coverage
• Part B - Medical Payments Coverage
• Part C - Uninsured Motorists Coverage
• Part D - Coverage For Damage To Your Auto
• Part E - Duties After an Accident or Loss
• Part F - General Provisions

Article by
Matt Robertson

Matt is the Managing Partner at Leland-West Insurance Brokers, Inc. He started with the firm while still a college student, way back in 1984. According to Matt his only remaining hobby is Motorsport ... because its all he can afford ("will work for tires"). Reach him at matt@lelandwest.com