Commercial Car Insurance
Let’s talk about commercial auto insurance in two areas. First, who is not insured and second, insurable interest.
From the policy form itself, who isn’t insured, by definition, is you for any auto that you’
re driving or anyone else while using your vehicle with permission except there are five exceptions to number 2 of who isn’t insured. As your agent never discussed those five exceptions with you. Do you know what five exceptions are? If not, give Steven a call and he’d be over these with you to make sure that you’re properly insured.
Secondly, insurable interest. Nearly once a week, someone comes with a vehicle where the title of the vehicle does not match the name of the insurance policy. This is a very dangerous situation in the event of the client. The named insured on the policy XYZ Incorporated and the title holder of the vehicle XYZ Incorporated is a proper alliance to create insurable interest but oftentimes, owners of a business adding on a vehicle that is titled on their name and their business is a corporation or an LLC.
There’s no insurable interest there and in the event of a claim, you could find yourself with problems. Perhaps no coverage at all. On the personal auto policy, when you have a vehicle titled in the name of a child, the auto policy is in two spouses’ name, there’s a problem with insurable interest.
Insurable interest is an easy problem to overcome. First of all, you need to inform your agent of whose name the vehicle is titled in. The agent should be asking that question, but if not, you need to advise you agent that the name of my vehicle is not my personal name, my business is XYZ Incorporated. The most typical and easiest way to creating trouble enters is the release agreements.
A lease agreement is an insurance document that is used to allow the vehicle that’s titled in an individual’s name to be insured on their commercial auto policy or the title holder can be added unto the policy as an additional insured. There’s certain ways to get around this but it needs to be discussed before you have a claim and may find yourself without any insurance coverage.