CNA is one of the largest property and casualty insurance companies in the United States. It offers insurance for small, midsize, and enterprise-level companies. As one of the oldest providers in the US, CNA has a history of offering cutting-edge insurance options and has been involved in some unique moments in history, such as offering insurance for a concert by The Beatles and insuring Apollo space missions. The company has grown steadily over the 127 years since its founding.
Pros
- 24/7 claims center
- Wide range of available coverages
- Over 100 years of experience
Cons
- Cannot purchase insurance online
- Limited online quoting capabilities
- No clear process for obtaining a certificate of insurance (COI) online
Standout Features
- Offers CNA Connect®, a customizable business owner’s policy (BOP) created for small businesses
- Purchase nearly every type of insurance your small business may need
- Free resources like a slip-and-fall claim kit for business owners
Financial stability: CNA’s AM Best rating is A (Excellent).
CNA Insurance Alternatives
 |  |  |
|---|---|---|
Best for businesses that want to save money by comparing quotes | Best for generating and sharing COIs quickly | Best for small business owners having trouble finding coverage |
A- to A+ (Excellent to Superior) Financial Rating | A- (Excellent) Financial Rating | A- to A+ (Excellent to Superior) Financial Rating |
CNA Insurance Coverage
As one of the largest carriers in the US, with services in Canada and Europe, CNA sells nearly every type of insurance a small business owner needs. The largest challenge with CNA is distinguishing its offerings between small, midsize, enterprise, and international businesses.
CNA’s flagship offering is CNA Connect®, a highly customizable BOP designed for small businesses. While the insurance industry often cites “customizable” or “tailored” products, those terms are usually used to describe the options policyholders have for coverage and limits. With CNA Connect®, the options provided for the BOP are highly customizable.
This BOP is available for more than 600 different classes of business and offers more than 300 different types of optional coverage endorsements for your business. For example, you can add employment practices liability or professional liability insurance to your policy. CNA also offers an international travel endorsement for businesses with employees who travel outside the US.
Another important policy offered by CNA is its commercial general liability insurance. CNA general liability coverage is available with limits up to $4 million. Like the BOP, it has options for additional coverages, including bundling with professional liability insurance.
CNA’s general liability policy includes coverage for medical expenses, premises liability, and product liability. Notably, I could not find definitive information on whether CNA includes personal and advertising injury in its general liability policy.
CNA’s primary professional liability package is designed for management services. It does, however, offer a miscellaneous errors and omissions (E&O) policy for other industries that need professional liability coverage. The management liability policy offers coverage for:
- Crime
- Fiduciary liability
- Directors and officers (D&O) liability
- Employment practices liability insurance (EPLI)
Separate, but related, CNA offers Epack 3, a modular policy package that functions like a BOP but for other coverages. Epack 3 provides cyber liability, media liability, and professional or management liability.
CNA sells workers’ compensation nationwide. It provides industry-standard workers’ comp coverage with provisions for employees who are injured or fall ill from work. It conducts risk training and analysis of your business and offers return-to-work programs to reduce the costs of claims.
Like workers’ comp, commercial auto insurance is one of the few types of required insurance for business owners. It offers a fairly barebones commercial auto policy with liability, first-party damage, and an endorsement in case you or any employee drives another car that isn’t owned by the business.
In addition to the most common business insurance mentioned above, CNA offers several specialized types of coverage. These include:
- Inland marine
- Ocean cargo
- Excess liability and umbrella insurance
CNA Industries Covered
Because of its size, CNA has an appetite for riskier industries than other carriers. These include businesses like:
- Construction
- Manufacturing
- Life sciences
- Healthcare
- Professional services
- Real estate
Of course, this list isn’t comprehensive. For example, in the course of our research, we received a quote for a solopreneur photographer.
CNA Business Insurance Quotes & Costs
The primary means of getting insurance from CNA is through agents. On its website, most coverage pages provide fields for you to supply contact information so that an agent can then call you, or an option to locate an agent near you. You can also call CNA at (877) 243-2930 during weekdays from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern time to get a quote.
How To Get a CNA Insurance Quote Online
It isn’t easy to get a quote from CNA online simply because locating the landing page for online quotes isn’t a straightforward process. For your sake, you can get an online quote through CNA here.
When it’s time to get a quote, the process is simple and quick. You’ll need the following information handy:
- Year the business started
- Number of employees
- Revenue
- Payroll
- Physical location
- Claims history
CNA will then generate a quote. The information provided is pretty sparse, but it does give you a general idea of the cost and coverage. To purchase the policy, you will then need to call CNA directly or schedule a call from an agent.
CNA Insurance Pricing
Unfortunately, unlike several other providers, CNA doesn’t publish the average price of its policies. For this article, we did obtain a quote for a business that had one full-time employee, was in a low-risk industry, and earned $90,000 in revenue each year.
The quote provided was for a BOP. The policy carried $15,000 in business personal property coverage with a deductible of $500. It also had general liability with $1 million per occurrence and $2 million aggregate. The cost was $897 annually, and no information on a payment plan was provided.
CNA Claims Process & Other Services
As you would expect with a carrier of this size and experience, CNA provides a number of services to its customers.
Claims Services
You can file a claim in multiple ways: over the phone, through email, or online. If your business still has a fax machine, you can file a claim via fax as well.
For claims reporting, CNA maintains a 24/7 claims hotline. However, the hotline is not for every type of coverage, and the phone number differs for each type of coverage. General liability and workers’ comp have different phone numbers, and you have to email a professional liability claim.
While I understand the complexity and potential employee stress of utilizing a common notice of loss (NOL) format, it’s complicated for a policyholder to navigate drop-down menus when trying to find the right number to call.
CNA employs in-house adjusters for workers’ compensation and other lines, but it also utilizes third-party administrators (TPA) to handle claims. It is unclear whether these TPAs are only involved in claims for catastrophic losses or if CNA utilizes their services for other scenarios. Either way, you should know there is a chance that if you are insured through CNA, another company might handle your claim.
Other Customer Services
CNA offers a wide number of resources for risk management. These include onsite evaluations, pamphlets, fliers on educational topics like returning to work post-COVID-19 or New York’s sidewalk law, and even a slip-and-fall claim kit in case an incident occurs. CNA also has training resources available to minimize claims, such as management training, to prevent harassment.
Unfortunately, CNA has not published any information on its website about COI or how to request one.
CNA Insurance Reviews
When surveying the online CNA insurance reviews available, the result yields a mixed bag. To determine how customers viewed CNA, I examined information drawn from third-party sources, including nonprofit organizations.
In lieu of a federal department of insurance or a national insurance regulatory board, state insurance commissioners participate in an organization known as the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). This organization provides different services including a way to view complaints filed at the state level against insurance companies.
Reviewing the NAIC complaint index for an insurance company is a great way to take a pulse on the service that the company is providing, especially because you can look at the data gathered over several years to identify trends. The NAIC complaint index of 1 is the national average—or the level of expected complaints.
In reviewing CNA’s NAIC trend report for 2022 (the most recent available), I found its complaint index was very low: 0.27. This means that the level of complaints filed against it is well below the national average.
However, third-party reviews of CNA paint an entirely different picture, with universally low scores across three third-party sources:
- Yelp[1]: 1.0 out of 5 stars from around 70 reviews
- Better Business Bureau (BBB)[2]: 1.06 out of 5 stars from about 15 reviews
- Trustpilot[3]: 1.8 stars out of 5 from over 15 reviews
Since CNA is one of the largest insurers in the US as well as a global insurer, around 100 reviews across three third-party review sites are not very many. Nevertheless, the customers in these reviews are overwhelmingly unhappy. The majority of the complaints boil down to unresponsive claims adjusters or unexpected denials of claims.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes, CNA is a legitimate insurance company. It is one of the largest property and casualty companies in the US. It is also a global company with operations in Canada and Europe.
CNA is owned by the Loews Corporation and is not a public company.
CNA only sells commercial insurance, with policies available to small, midsize, and enterprise businesses. For small businesses, its primary offering is CNA Connect®, a highly customizable BOP.
The primary number to reach CNA Commercial is (877) 574-0540. This line is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. To reach a licensed agent, you will need to call (877) 243-2930 from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Both lines are open Monday through Friday Eastern time.
The name CNA is an amalgamation of some of the different insurance companies it has acquired: Continental Casualty, National Fire Insurance of Hartford, and American Casualty.
Bottom Line
CNA is one of the oldest insurance companies in the US. Over the past 30 years, it has divested its personal lines, group benefits, and life insurance divisions while increasing its focus on commercial insurance. It is one of the largest commercial carriers in the US and is an international carrier. The company’s BOP for small businesses, CNA Connect®, has over 300 coverage endorsements, allowing you to customize it to fit your business.
Visit CNA for a quote;
Quote provided by Simply Business
User review references:
[1]Yelp | CNA Insurance
[2]BBB | CNA Insurance
[3]Trustpilot | CNA Insurance
