The Hartford Insurance Review

The Hartford’s business personal property (BPP) insurance helps cover the cost of repairing or replacing items, such as tools and equipment, furniture, and accounts receivable records.

This coverage usually works on a named-peril basis, meaning if your property suffers a loss from fire, wind damage, or theft, then you can file a claim. It can also help with lost income if you’ve suffered a loss and your business has to close while you get things back up and running.

Commercial property insurance is first-party coverage. This is similar to BPP but includes coverage for the entire structure or building. This makes it a crucial policy for businesses that own a building to have.

In evaluating the best general liability insurance companies, The Hartford scored the highest and is the best provider. It is affordable: the average customer paid $67 a month for general liability.

General liability through The Hartford includes the standard three areas of coverage you’d expect to find with this type of insurance: property damage, bodily injury, and personal and advertising injury. You also have the option to purchase several endorsements with this coverage.

The Hartford offers a highly customizable BOP that can be tailored to your specific business and industry. Examples of additional coverages that can be added to a BOP are data breach, business income for a utility outage, and professional liability.

Since a BOP contains both commercial property and general liability coverage, it is usually a more affordable option than purchasing both of these policies as standalone coverage. The Hartford business insurance costs can vary depending on your company, but its average for a BOP is around $85 monthly.

For losses outside of general liability, The Hartford offers professional liability, which is available for over 60 different industry classes. Some highlights of the policy are it provides coverage for personal injury, including mental anguish or emotional distress, and disciplinary proceedings coverage.

Beyond professional liability, The Hartford offers several management liability policies for different types of businesses, including:

• Directors & officers (D&O) insurance protects directors and officers from mistakes while managing a company.
• Employment practices liability insurance (EPLI) protects your business from a complaint made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
• Fiduciary liability insurance protects your business from fiduciary mismanagement claims.
• Crime insurance protects your business from employee-related crimes against the company.

In our evaluation of the best workers’ compensation insurance companies, we determined The Hartford to be the best overall provider. It is also the second-largest provider of workers’ compensation by market share.

An important component of workers’ compensation claims is medical management. The Hartford has case managers who will work with your injured employees on their treatment plans and a network of more than 65,000 providers. It also has a prescription benefit program to help reduce costs.

Cyber liability is available as a standalone coverage or an endorsement. Because The Hartford understands insurance isn’t a one-size-fits-all policy, it offers two cyber insurance policies for small businesses:

1. Data breach is geared more toward smaller businesses. It helps handle the response to a data breach by notifying those who have been impacted, helping a public relations company, and offering financial monitoring services. There are several endorsements available to help flesh this coverage out, depending on your business.
2. Cyber liability is for larger businesses and helps with lawsuits, regulatory fines, and extortion for ransomware attacks. It also helps with some expenses a business has after a cyber breach. The Hartford has additional services for policyholders who purchase this coverage through CyberChoice First Response, which has programs for training and response to a cyber loss.

For more information, visit The Hartford’s cyber insurance page.

If your business owns any vehicles or has employees regularly driving their vehicles for business purposes, then The Hartford has partnered with Tivly to help you find coverage.

When considering all of The Hartford’s commercial lines, it has lower-than-expected complaints with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), an organization that monitors complaints filed with state departments of insurance (DOI). Providers take a DOI complaint seriously and must respond to the complaints.

The average number of complaints filed against The Hartford for small business lines in 2022 totals 0.49.

The NAIC has an index of 1 for complaints:

• A score of 1 means that the provider has received the average number of expected complaints.
• A score of between 1 and 2 means it has a higher-than-expected number of complaints.
• A score lower than 1 indicates it has a lower-than-expected number of complaints.

There are several organizations that have written The Hartford business insurance reviews. A common thread in their evaluations is that the company’s quoting experience is easy and that it has several options to tailor policies to your specific industry. On the flip side, one common problem is that it doesn’t have any offerings for farms and ranches:

• J.D. Power’s 2023 Independent Agent Satisfaction Survey placed The Hartford third in satisfaction among independent agents working in commercial lines. This is at least the second year in a row it has held this position.
• In J.D. Power’s Small Business Insurance customer satisfaction survey, The Hartford scored 839 points out of a 1,000-point scale. This is below the average score for insurers of 847.
• It’s worth noting another evaluation of The Hartford that does not fit the traditional mold of a company review. Ethisphere, a private company that evaluates and promotes ethics in the corporate world, gives out the World’s Most Ethical Companies designation to worldwide businesses each year. In 2023, The Hartford received the award for the 14th time.

The Hartford encourages customers to leave reviews through its Star Claim Experience feature. Overall, it received about 59,000 reviews with an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars; this rating includes personal lines.

Many customers shared how simple and easy the claim experience was and expressed happiness over the outcome of the claim. However, while there are not many 1-star reviews, one common complaint was a lack of communication from the adjuster.

The Hartford’s business insurance user reviews are as follows:

• Workers’ compensation: 4.8 out of 5 stars from around 3,800 reviews
• Commercial auto insurance: 4.6 out of 5 stars from about 700 reviews
• Commercial property insurance: 4.7 out of 5 from around 4,700 reviews
• General liability insurance: 4.8 out of 5 from about 800 reviews

If you do have a complaint, start the process of resolving it by filling out a complaint form online.

Yes, The Hartford sells both commercial and personal lines of insurance. This includes policies for homeowners and personal autos. On the auto side, The Hartford is a partner with AARP car insurance.

The Hartford insures all business sizes. What’s more, with Putty by The Hartford, the provider will insure one person’s short-term projects. It even insures global companies with multinational locations.

AM Best, the financial rating agency for insurance companies, rates The Hartford A+ (Superior). This means its financial situation is solid and can handle and pay claims.