The Hartford Business Insurance Review 2026: Stable Company With a Customizable BOP
The Hartford offers comprehensive coverage for businesses of all sizes. You might be able to get a quote online.
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Updated · 2 min read
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Why trust NerdWallet
The Hartford stands out among business insurance companies for its business owner's policy. Most BOPs include general liability, business property and business interruption insurance, but The Hartford allows you to tack on data breach and professional liability coverage too. That makes it simple to get the coverage most small businesses need.
Beyond that, The Hartford is a longstanding business insurance company with robust financial strength ratings and relatively few customer complaints. It’s old-school in some ways — for instance, you might have to call to get or complete a quote. But you can request a copy of your certificate of insurance digitally and file claims online 24/7.
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The Hartford business insurance pros and cons
Pros
Fewer complaints than expected filed with state regulators about both liability and property insurance.
You can add data breach, professional liability and business income for off-premises utility service coverage to The Hartford's business owner's policy.
You can add an additional insured and request a certificate of insurance online.
Cons
No coverage available in Alaska or Hawaii.
Not all businesses can get a quote online.
What The Hartford does well
Financial strength and few complaints
AM Best, a credit rating agency, gives The Hartford’s parent company an “excellent” rating. And policyholders filed fewer complaints than we’d expect with state regulators between 2022 and 2024 about general liability and commercial property insurance, given the company’s market share. Taken together, this suggests a trustworthy, predictable company.
Business owner’s policies with additional coverage
Business owner’s policies, or BOPs, are usually one-size-fits all insurance packages. But The Hartford advertises useful endorsements, like data breach coverage and business income coverage for certain things that happen offsite, which policyholders can tack on to expand their coverage. That means your business can get additional protection without having to deal with multiple insurance policies or companies.
Access to risk management consultants
As your business grows, The Hartford offers on-site or virtual risk management consultations. These consultants can help you with fleet management, product liability services, ergonomics issues and more. If you work in a high-risk industry, this could help you better understand what your insurance protects against and where you might have gaps in your coverage.
Where The Hartford falls short
Limited online quotes
The Hartford only offers online quotes if you need workers’ comp or a business owners’ policy (including its component parts, general liability and business property insurance). If you’re shopping for professional liability insurance, commercial auto insurance or other policies, you’ll have to talk to a salesperson on the phone. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you have questions about your coverage. But it will take longer.
Mediocre customer satisfaction scores
The Hartford scored below average on J.D. Power’s 2025 small-business insurance survey. This report surveys business owners about how satisfied they are with their insurance company.
J.D. Power doesn’t publish specifics about survey responses. But they do say the study asks about trust, costs, coverage offerings, ease of doing business, ease of getting problems resolved and more.
No matter an insurance company’s satisfaction ratings, your mileage may vary. (If you’re filing a claim, your business is dealing with a loss — that’s rarely a good experience overall.) But the top-rated companies in J.D. Power’s 2025 survey were Erie Insurance and Cincinnati Insurance. Both sell policies through independent agents, so ask your agent whether they work with those insurers and if they can help you get a quote.
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How we evaluated The Hartford
NerdWallet’s business insurance star ratings include these factors:
- Financial strength (33%). This tells us how likely an insurance company is to be able to pay out claims if there’s a major disaster or financial crisis. The Hartford’s parent company has an “excellent” rating from AM Best.
- Customer complaints (33%). The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) collects data about how many complaints were filed by an insurer’s customers. Between 2022 and 2024, The Hartford received fewer complaints about general liability and commercial property insurance than we’d expect given its market share.
- Purchase process (17%): The Hartford sells virtually every type of business insurance. You can get a quote online for some policy types to ballpark your prices. You’ll have to work with an independent agent to complete your purchase. That can be a good thing, since you’ll have a chance to ask questions before you commit to your coverage.
- Customer support (17%): The Hartford is middle-of-the-road here. In J.D. Power’s 2025 small-business insurance survey, the brand’s customer satisfaction ratings were below average. You have to request a certificate of insurance online instead of accessing it automatically. But you can file claims 24/7 online or over the phone. And presumably your agent provides some additional help as you navigate the insurance space.
I take a few additional steps when writing reviews of business insurers. These don’t currently inform our star ratings, but you’ll see details about them below:
- Aggregating customer reviews and complaints. I used an AI tool to summarize what policyholders say about The Hartford on websites like Reddit, Trustpilot and the Better Business Bureau. We don’t factor this feedback into star ratings because it’s usually anonymous and we can’t verify it. But we still think it can help shoppers understand the potential ups and downs of a particular insurer.
- Trying the online quote process. If an insurer offers online quotes, like The Hartford does for at least some users, I get one. I use the same location, industry and business size information every time. The quote process can reveal how customizable policies are, hidden fees and more. We don’t include this in star ratings because many insurance companies still don’t offer online quotes, so we can’t gather the data from every brand.
What small-business owners think about The Hartford
I read through online forums like Reddit, review sites like the Better Business Bureau and Google and Apple’s app stores to understand how users feel about The Hartford. I then used an AI tool to help analyze overall sentiment.
The Hartford also sells personal home and auto insurance, so it’s not always easy to isolate complaints from business owners. There’s also just a lot less chatter online about this brand than about online-first business insurance companies.
Here are the themes that stood out, though:
👍 Trusted brand
People generally trust The Hartford. It has decades in business, and insurance agents and customer service pros say they respect the company and have few qualms about selling its policies.
👎 Big premium increases
Some users say The Hartford increased their premiums by massive amounts — 30% or more — even when they didn’t file claims. Some say The Hartford dropped them entirely.
Unfortunately, this can happen with any insurance company. Premiums are rising across the board as natural disasters get more frequent, rebuilding materials get more expensive and labor shortages make construction timelines longer. If your insurer hits you with a premium increase, shop around to see if you can find cheaper coverage.
What policies does The Hartford sell?
The Hartford offers most small-business insurance policies. Click on each type of coverage to learn about what it’s for:
- General liability insurance.
- Professional liability insurance.
- Workers’ compensation insurance.
- Commercial umbrella insurance.
- Employment practices liability insurance.
- Liquor liability insurance.
How to get insurance from The Hartford
Getting an online quote from The Hartford takes a few minutes.
While writing this review, I went through the quote process. I told The Hartford I was a freelance marketing consultant working out of my home, earning about $10,000 in annual revenue.
The system asked for:
- My business structure.
- Where my business operates.
- Whether my business is a nonprofit.
- What I do.
- Whether my consulting services include computer consulting or programming.
- Whether I have employees.
After that, I had to choose which insurance policies I needed. The Hartford didn’t proactively suggest coverage.
From there, the system asked:
- Whether I always use written documentation of work, including contracts.
- Whether I’ve had any professional liability claims in the last three years.
- For a description of my business, in my own words.
- What I expect my annual revenue to be.
I had the opportunity to set my own business personal property limit and adjust my professional liability limits and deductibles.
The flow asked a few questions about my home, presumably because I’m buying property insurance. These included:
- What year it was built.
- Whether the roof, electrical equipment, HVAC and plumbing systems have been upgraded.
- How many floors it has.
In less than a minute, The Hartford produced a quote for my property insurance. The system asked me to call for more information about my professional liability policy, though.
In the FAQs, I found a note explaining that quotes for business owner’s policies and workers’ comp are available online for most businesses, but other coverages (like professional liability insurance) aren’t.
So, I called the phone number. A customer service rep answered after about two and a half minutes.
Since I don’t actually need insurance, I stopped there. But It would’ve been nice to know earlier on that I couldn’t get an online quote. Since we always recommend getting quotes from multiple insurance companies, I would probably have pivoted to working with a local agent instead of getting multiple quotes over the phone.
Multiple quotes are important because every insurer charges a slightly different price depending on your industry, business size, location and more. Compare several make sure you’re getting a reasonable price.
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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.
Our editorial team regularly reviews and updates our data to ensure consistency and accuracy. We also update our scoring on an ongoing basis to reflect changing industry norms and business owner needs. For instance, in 2026, we began evaluating how easy insurers make it to add an additional insured.
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. We use the most recent three years of data, which is currently 2022-2024.
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.
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