One car in the firm's name, or none at all. Those are different policies, and plenty of firms have bought the wrong one.

If a firm checks an employee's driving record before letting her drive on firm business, and it orders that record through a background screening company, federal consumer reporting law attaches to the request. A person may not procure a consumer report for employment purposes unless "a clear and conspicuous disclosure has been made in writing to the consumer" in "a document that consists solely of the disclosure" and the person is authorised in writing by that consumer (15 U.S.C. 1681b(b)(2)(A)). Before acting on what the record says, 1681b(b)(3)(A) requires you to give the employee a copy of the report and a written description of her rights first. Ordering a record directly from a state motor vehicle agency is a different transaction under different rules, so establish which one your vendor is actually doing.

Symbols 8 and 9 do not reach the car in the firm's name

Open the declarations page. Against each coverage the carrier has printed a numbered covered auto symbol. That symbol, rather than any general description of the firm elsewhere in the policy, settles which vehicles the coverage beside it will answer for. Nothing else on the page decides more.

On the standard business auto coverage form used across the market, symbol 8 means hired autos: vehicles the firm leases, hires, rents or borrows. Symbol 9 means non-owned autos: vehicles that nobody in the firm owns, hires or borrows, used in the business. Between them they describe the rental car at a conference and the associate's own hatchback on a courthouse run.

Neither of them describes a car the practice bought. An owned vehicle is not hired, and it is not non-owned, so a policy carrying only 8 and 9 has nothing to say about it. Owned vehicles need an owned-auto symbol, which on the standard form is symbol 1 for any auto, symbol 2 for owned autos only, or symbol 7 for the specific vehicles described in the declarations.

The sequence that produces the loss is dull and repeatable. A consultancy buys hired and non-owned years ago because a client asked for it. Later it buys a car and puts it in the company name for tax reasons. Nobody connects the two events, because buying a car doesn't feel like an insurance decision. The symbols never change. Read the numbers on your own page today, and if you own anything at all, check that an owned symbol is sitting beside liability and beside physical damage.

The car is titled to a partner, not to the practice

Titling decides who has an insurable interest in the vehicle, which carrier is willing to write it, and who gets named personally when a claim turns into a lawsuit. It isn't a bookkeeping detail.

A vehicle registered to the LLC or the corporation belongs on the business auto policy. There isn't much argument available. The harder case, and the common one in professional firms, is the partner's own car that gets used for client work and is expensed through the firm. That vehicle usually stays on a personal auto policy, and it usually can, provided the personal carrier knows what the car is doing.

The thing that breaks it is silence. If the personal carrier was never told that the car makes client visits, or that a second employee borrows it, then the firm is relying on a policy underwritten for a different set of facts. Disclosure is free. Ring the personal carrier, say what the vehicle does, and get the answer in writing.

Two flags worth raising with us before you decide. If the vehicle is financed or leased in the firm's name, the lender's requirements usually settle the question for you. And if the same car is driven by anyone who is not an owner, most personal carriers become considerably less relaxed about it.

The rented car on a business trip, and who pays for the dent

Symbol 8 is the one that matters when staff travel. It reaches vehicles the firm rents in its own name, and it is why a business auto policy can respond when a manager backs a hire car into a bollard at an airport.

What it doesn't automatically do is pay for damage to the rental car itself. Liability and physical damage carry their own symbols, and hired physical damage is frequently a separate item with a separate limit rather than something included by default. That is the coverage the rental desk is selling you at the counter when it offers a damage waiver.

So work out the answer before the trip rather than at the desk. Ask whoever holds the policy three things. Is hired physical damage on the policy, and at what limit. Does it apply when the rental agreement is signed in an employee's own name rather than the firm's. And does the corporate card you book with carry its own rental cover, because a good many do, usually on conditions about declining the counter waiver. Once you know, write the answer into the travel policy so nobody has to guess at a counter in another state.

Pulling a driving record on someone who drives her own car

A firm with vehicles gets a driver list because the carrier demands one. A firm with no vehicles usually doesn't, because hired and non-owned is rated on payroll or headcount and the underwriter never asks who is behind the wheel. That is convenient at renewal and it is exactly why nobody at the firm knows anything about the driving records of the people it sends to client sites.

You aren't obliged to fix that. You are choosing whether to. Firms that decide to run their own standard usually settle on four things: a written note of who is authorised to drive on firm business, proof of a current licence and personal insurance at hire and each year after, a driving record checked on the same cycle, and a short written list of what disqualifies somebody from driving for the firm.

If you go that way, the mechanics of ordering the record carry legal conditions of their own, which is what the box above this section sets out. Decide the disqualifying criteria before you read anybody's record, not after. Deciding afterwards is how a driving standard turns into an argument about one person.

The clause in the client contract, not the certificate request

Professional firms meet this through procurement portals and master services agreements rather than through a builder handing over a form. The request that arrives is usually an automated one asking for a certificate. The requirement itself is upstream of that, written into a schedule of the agreement you signed.

Send us the clause. It generally does three separate things, and a firm can satisfy one of them while failing the others. It names a limit for automobile liability. It may require that the client is added as an additional insured on the auto policy, which is a distinct endorsement from the one on general liability and is not automatic on either. And it may ask you to waive subrogation on the auto line as well.

Two traps specific to firms with no vehicles. Some carriers won't issue an additional insured or waiver endorsement on a non-owned-only auto form at all, and you would rather learn that during onboarding than during a certificate audit two years in. And some agreements ask for automobile liability in the same breath as professional liability, so the certificate has to show both lines and satisfy both clauses. A certificate that reads correctly over a policy that doesn't do the work is worse than an honest gap, because it stops anybody looking again.

We keep the contract reading and the placing together on purpose. There is more on that in contract insurance requirements for professional firms.

Driving to a client site sits between two policies

This is the seam professional firms get wrong, and it runs in both directions.

Professional liability, the errors and omissions policy, answers for the financial harm your advice and your work product cause. Standard wordings exclude bodily injury, and they exclude claims arising out of the ownership, maintenance or use of a motor vehicle. So a collision on the drive to a client meeting is an auto claim from the first phone call, regardless of the fact that the journey was made to deliver professional services.

Run it the other way and the same seam holds. A surveyor who misreads a boundary and drives home has an errors and omissions claim, not an auto one. The vehicle was incidental to the mistake.

Where it gets genuinely difficult is the claim that alleges both, which happens more than you would expect: a consultant collects a client's staff for a site visit, there is a crash, and the pleadings allege negligent driving and negligent supervision of the engagement together. Two policies, two carriers, two sets of defence counsel. It is survivable, and it is much more survivable when both policies exist and somebody has read them alongside each other. That is the argument for placing professional liability and the auto line as one program rather than two purchases.

What a firm with no vehicles at all actually buys

Hired and non-owned auto liability is usually written one of two ways. It can be endorsed onto a business owners policy, which is how most small firms end up with it, or it can sit on a monoline business auto policy carrying symbols 8 and 9 and nothing else. Both produce a certificate that shows an automobile liability line.

Three things about it are worth knowing before you buy. It is liability only, so there is no physical damage on a vehicle the firm doesn't own. It is generally rated on payroll, headcount or a flat charge, which means it can be audited at the end of the term if the exposure base moved. And it doesn't follow the employee, it protects the firm, which is the sentence to use when somebody on staff asks whether the firm is insuring her car.

The equipment travelling in those cars is a separate purchase again. Laptops, survey kit, cameras and sample cases belong on an inland marine schedule rather than on the auto policy, and a smashed car window in a client's car park is an equipment claim before it is anything else.

What varies by carrier, and what to ask

Whether hired and non-owned is built into the business owners policy or has to be added by endorsement. Whether hired physical damage is available and at what limit. Whether the carrier will write an owner's personally titled vehicle once an employee drives it. Whether the carrier will endorse a client onto the auto policy as an additional insured, or agree to waive subrogation, on a non-owned-only form. How the exposure base is audited at the end of the term. Whether the carrier wants a driver list at all for a firm with no owned vehicles.

Ask those six of whoever holds the policy now. The speed of the answer tells you something separate from the answer itself.

What to send us

• Your current declarations page, so the covered auto symbols can be read rather than guessed at.
• Any vehicle the firm owns or leases, with year, make, model, VIN and who has the keys.
• A count of staff who drive on firm business, whether or not they own the car they drive.
• How often the firm rents vehicles, and whose name goes on the rental agreement.
• Any client contract or master services agreement that names an automobile liability requirement.
• Your professional liability declarations, so the two lines can be read against each other.

The structural version of all of this, written without the professional-firm framing, sits at commercial auto for cars and light trucks. The wider line, including the weight rating that decides which half of commercial auto you are in, sits on the commercial auto router, and the regulated end that a professional firm reaches only by buying something unusual is on heavy trucks and fleets. The rest of the program for advice-led businesses is on the professional services hub.

Reviewed for insurance accuracy by Richard Sweet, owner of Vantage Point Risk and an independent insurance advisor. Last reviewed August 12, 2026. How we review this.