Car Rental Business Insurance: What You Need, How to Get It

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- How many cars you have.
- What kind of cars they are.
- How much your cars are worth.
- Whether you own standard cars or other types of vehicles.
What kind of insurance do car rental businesses need?
Commercial fleet insurance
General liability insurance
Excess liability insurance
Commercial property insurance
Workers' compensation insurance
Where to get car rental business insurance
Nationwide
Allstate
How to shop for car rental fleet insurance
- Liability: On top of a general liability policy, your commercial fleet insurance should include liability coverage that protects third parties from any bodily injury or property damage caused by your vehicles.
- Medical payments: Medical payments coverage will pay the medical bills and expenses of anyone injured in an accident while they were in one of your cars, regardless of who was at fault.
- Physical damage: This coverage protects you in the case of loss or damage to the cars in your fleet specifically.
- Collision damage: Collision damage is usually part of physical damage and mainly covers loss or damages to your cars when they are involved in a collision or rollover.
- Comprehensive coverage: Comprehensive coverage is also typically included as physical damage coverage. Comprehensive coverage accounts for any events that aren't collisions or rollovers, such as theft, vandalism, fire and storms.
- Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage: This covers your cars and drivers if they’re involved in an accident with another driver who has little or no insurance coverage. This coverage also protects your business in the case of a hit-and-run, where you have no information on the other driver.
- Roadside assistance: This coverage can include access to towing if one of your cars breaks down, as well as additional support in situations like a vehicle in your fleet getting a flat or an employee being locked out of the car.
- Rental coverage: If you need to rent a replacement vehicle when one in your fleet is damaged.
- Accessories coverage: For GPS, radios or other equipment installed in your vehicles.
- Garage liability: To cover any day-to-day maintenance and repairs you make on your vehicles.
- Supplemental liability insurance: This coverage protects the vehicle’s driver in case they cause bodily harm or property damage to a third party.
- Personal accident insurance: This coverage protects the vehicle’s driver and anyone else in the car in the case of accidental death or emergency medical services.
- Personal effects insurance: This coverage protects the individual who rents your car in the event their personal property is stolen or damaged while they’re using the vehicle.
How much is car rental business insurance?
- The number of cars in your fleet.
- The type of vehicles — trucks, for example, are more expensive to insure than passenger cars.
- The condition, age and value of the vehicles.
- Any equipment or accessories the vehicles have.
- Your policy coverage and limits.
- The insurer you work with.
Article sources
Methodology
Business insurance ratings methodology
NerdWallet’s business insurance ratings reward companies that offer small-business owners reliability and ease of use. Ratings are based on weighted averages of scores in several categories, including financial strength, customer complaint data, shopping experience and customer service. Learn more about how we rate small-business insurance companies.
These ratings are a guide, but insurance policy details and prices can vary widely from business to business and provider to provider. We encourage you to shop around and compare several insurance quotes.
NerdWallet does not receive compensation for any reviews. Read our editorial guidelines.
Insurer complaints methodology
NerdWallet examined complaints received by state insurance regulators and reported to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in 2018-2021.
To assess how insurers compare to one another, the NAIC calculates a complaint index each year for each subsidiary, measuring its share of total complaints relative to its size, or share of total premiums in the industry. To evaluate a company’s complaint history, NerdWallet calculated a similar index for each insurer, weighted by market shares of each subsidiary, over the three-year period.
Our star ratings consider ratios for both general liability insurance and commercial property insurance. When an insurer sells policies that are underwritten by several different insurance companies, we consider the NAIC complaint ratios of all the underwriters.