Commercial Lines Coverages
The commercial toolkit
- Commercial property: building and business personal property, with causes-of-loss forms (basic, broad, special), coinsurance, blanket versus specific limits, and optional coverages like agreed value.
- Business income and extra expense: replaces lost net income and continuing expenses during the period of restoration, plus extra costs to resume operations.
- Commercial auto: liability and physical damage keyed to “covered auto” symbols; who is an insured depends on the symbol chosen.
- Workers' compensation: Nevada employers with one or more employees must carry coverage under NRS 616A–616D; workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy for work injuries, which is why the CGL excludes employee bodily injury.
- Umbrella/excess: sits above scheduled underlying policies, may drop down for some coverages, and requires self-insured retention for gaps.
- Specialty lines: builders risk, inland marine (property in transit or at job sites), crime, equipment breakdown.
Worked example
A contractor's employee, driving a company pickup with tools, rear-ends a third party and the tools are destroyed. Reasoning: the auto liability loss belongs to the commercial auto policy, not the CGL, because auto use is excluded. The employee's own injuries are workers' compensation, excluded by the CGL employers liability carve-out. The tools are business personal property or inland marine, subject to that policy's limit and deductible. Three policies, three different analyses, one accident.
Traps that cost marks
Using the CGL for auto or employee-injury losses. Reading the special causes-of-loss form as covering every cause (exclusions still apply). Ignoring coinsurance on commercial property. Forgetting that business income starts at the date of loss and ends at the period of restoration, not at a fixed number of months.