Insurance guides
Plain guides to 20 lines of insurance. Each one reads the published forms and law: what it covers, what it excludes, what actually goes wrong, what reduces it, and what an underwriter asks. Every statement cites a source you can open.
For a business
Commercial Auto Insurance
The coverage part that responds when a vehicle used in a business injures someone or damages their property. On the standard form it is built differently from every other commercial line: th…
Commercial General Liability (CGL)
Commercial general liability insurance pays sums a business becomes legally obligated to pay as damages for third-party bodily injury and property damage. Whether the insurer also carries a …
Commercial Property Insurance
Commercial property insurance pays for direct physical loss of or damage to a business's buildings and business personal property caused by a covered cause of loss. This page is general info…
Community association insurance (California)
The insurance program a California homeowners association buys for itself: property on the common area, general liability, crime and fidelity, and directors and officers cover for the volunt…
Employment practices liability
Cover for claims arising from the employment relationship: discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and the related failures the law treats as wrongs in themselves. The policy form is not pu…
Surety bonds
A promise to be liable for the debt, default or failure of another. A surety bond is a three-party contract in which the surety guarantees the performance of the principal to a third party, …
Surplus lines (California)
Not a line of insurance so much as a route to one. When no admitted California insurer will write a risk, a licensed surplus line broker may place it with a nonadmitted insurer instead . Wha…
Workers Compensation Insurance (California)
California employers are required by statute to secure the payment of workers compensation. Labor Code section 3700 provides that every employer except the state shall secure the payment of …
For a household
Condominium unit owners insurance (California)
The policy an individual owner buys for the part of a common interest development that is theirs, written against a boundary set by statute and by the declaration rather than by the policy. …
Flood insurance (National Flood Insurance Program)
Cover for direct physical loss by or from flood, written in the United States mostly on a policy form that is itself federal regulation. The Standard Flood Insurance Policy Dwelling Form is …
Homeowners insurance
Homeowners insurance is a package policy on a residence that combines property coverage on the dwelling, other structures, and personal property with loss of use, personal liability, and med…
Landlord / rental dwelling insurance
A landlord or rental dwelling policy insures a residence the owner rents to others rather than occupies. One national carrier's rental dwelling program is described as providing dwelling cov…
Personal auto insurance (California)
The policy that responds when a private passenger vehicle injures someone, damages property, or is itself damaged. In California more of this line is written by statute than by the form: the…
Renters insurance (California)
The policy a tenant buys for the half of the building the landlord does not insure. The regulator states it plainly: the landlord does not provide insurance for the tenant's personal propert…
Residential earthquake insurance (California)
Residential earthquake insurance is bought separately from the homeowners policy, because CDI states that homeowners, renters, and condominium insurance policies do not cover damage from nat…
Scheduled personal property (California)
Cover for individually listed items that an ordinary contents limit will not fully answer. The reason it exists is a feature of homeowners policies rather than of the items: coverage on cert…
Title insurance (California)
The one line here that does not answer future events. California defines title insurance as insuring, guaranteeing or indemnifying owners of property or holders of liens against loss suffere…
Wildfire coverage and availability (California)
Wildfire is not a policy you buy. It is a peril the residential property form already covers, and the questions that actually arise are about availability rather than coverage: whether the p…
A guide is a reading, not a summary
Each guide is the same evidence as its reference page, arranged for someone meeting the line for the first time. Every section is deep-linkable, so a colleague or an answer engine can point at the exact part that matters rather than at the page.
None of them prices anything, decides eligibility, or states what your own policy covers. Where a statement depends on the form, the note says so, because that is where the answer actually lives.