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The Hartford Review

The Hartford
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The Hartford
The Hartford
Catherine Miller
Apr. 18, 2023
5 min read
Catherine Miller
The Hartford Summary
The Hartford is a long-standing insurance provider with a wide range of business insurance policies on offer. Its informative website helps you pick the coverage you need, and a representative will help you apply once you request a quote. Although it’s not available in all states, and there’s no live chat support, The Hartford is worth considering if you’re a new business exploring what insurance you need.

Pros

  • Wide range of business insurance types
  • Useful quiz to find out what you need
  • Also offers proactive risk management

Cons

  • Not available in all states
  • No live chat support

The Hartford at a glance

9.4
Editorial score

Policy Types

4-8 coverage types
9.0

Coverage Limit

Not specified
9.0

States Served

Available in all 50 states
10.0

Industries Served

Over 20 industries served
10.0

Customer Support

Support via phone and website form
9.0

The Hartford at a Glance 

Coverage options

  • General liability insurance

  • Business income insurance

  • Business property insurance

  • Business owners policy 

  • Workers’ compensation insurance

  • Commercial auto insurance

  • Commercial flood insurance

  • Commercial umbrella insurance

  • Data breach insurance

  • Employment practices liability insurance

  • Home-based business insurance

  • Management liability insurance

  • Marine insurance

  • Multinational insurance

  • Professional liability insurance

  • Surety bonds

Can file claims online

Yes

Pricing

$52-$275 monthly

Suitable for

Any size company needing business insurance, including those with commercial premises and home-based businesses. 

Those seeking specialist services like surety bonds.

Online Experience

Useful online quiz, online quote form, and detailed website. No mobile app.

The Hartford The Hartford Visit Site

Overview 

The Hartford has been around for over 211 years and offers an array of insurance products for your business. It also offers auto and home insurance and a range of employee benefits. Whether you need to cover your business premises for damage or protect yourself against the cost of legal suits, The Hartford has suitable insurance for you. There are even policies that will ensure an income for your business if property damage stops you from trading. 

Why The Hartford Is Good For Your Business

The Hartford has a wide range of insurance types for different kinds of businesses, whether you work from home or have commercial premises. It’s a well-established provider, with a website that walks you through the details to help you choose the policies that are right for you. There’s even a directory of state employment laws to help you navigate this complex area.

Something I really like about The Hartford is that its insurance doesn’t just cover damage to premises. You can also find policies that cover you for the cost of legal bills—for example, if you’re involved in a dispute over wrongful termination, or subject to a cyber attack (essential for modern businesses collecting and storing customer data electronically).

The Hartford also goes above and beyond traditional forms of business insurance to offer you some more unusual services to protect your business. These include surety bonds that you can use to guarantee payment to your customers and suppliers if you can’t deliver your services— particularly useful in businesses like construction. 

If your business has a high risk of employee injury, you might also find the Hartford Productivity Advantage system helpful. This links up absence reporting for your employees with claims for workers’ compensation, making processes more streamlined, and helping you avoid costly legal suits. 

Insurance Coverage

The Hartford offers a really wide range of business insurance types, so no matter what your business needs are, you should be able to find policies to suit you. Types of insurance on offer include the following:

  • General liability insurance: Covers you for claims against your business, for example, injury or property damage.

  • Business income insurance: Replaces your income if you can’t operate due to property damage.

  • Business property insurance: Covers your business premises for damage, destruction, and theft.

  • Business owners policy (BOP): This policy combines business/commercial property insurance, general liability insurance, and business income insurance.

  • Workers’ compensation insurance: Provides employees with medical, income, and other benefits if they’re injured or become sick at work. This is enhanced by:

    • Risk engineering: The risk team can help you proactively avoid potential issues surrounding workers’ compensation, like safety evaluations.

    • The Hartford Productivity Advantage: A coordinated claims service and employee absence reporting service.

  • Commercial auto insurance: Covers the cost of an auto accident caused by you or an employee.

  • Commercial flood insurance: Covers flooding caused by a range of situations, including hurricanes, rain, and construction.

  • Commercial umbrella insurance: This increases your liability coverage if the cost of a lawsuit exceeds your existing coverage limits.

  • Data breach insurance: This insures your business for costs arising from data breaches, hacks, or cyberattacks. 

  • Employment practices liability insurance: This covers you for costs relating to employment claims, including wrongful termination, discrimination, and workplace harassment.

  • Home-based business insurance: This makes sure you’re covered in areas like property damage, employment issues, and lawsuits, even if you work from home.

  • Management liability insurance: This protects your management team specifically from financial harm.

  • Marine insurance: This covers cargo (and vehicles carrying it)—and not just by sea. Despite the name, marine insurance actually covers land cargo as well.

  • Multinational insurance: This covers businesses with operations outside the United States.

  • Professional liability insurance: If you’re found negligent in your professional services, this will cover you.

  • Surety bonds: These guarantee that your customers and suppliers will be paid even if you can’t complete your services.

Application Process

To obtain business insurance, you first need to obtain a quote from The Hartford. You can do this on the phone or online. The online quote form takes just a few minutes and requires you to input some information about your business as well as your contact details. 

A representative from The Hartford will then call you to walk you through the application process. I would have found it useful to be able to get an instant quote directly on the website, to make the process quicker and easier. However, there’s a quick quiz on the website that you can take before getting your quote, to find out which insurance policies might be helpful. 

How Much Does It Cost? 

The exact cost of your policy will depend on several factors, including the nature of your business and the type of cover you want to purchase. However, The Hartford helpfully gives average annual figures to help you work out how its most popular policies might fit into your budget:

Package

Average monthly cost

Business owners policy (BOP)

$261

General liability insurance

$88

Workers’ compensation insurance

$52-$275

How Safe Is It? 

As The Hartford collects and deals with lots of sensitive information as part of its insurance processes, it’s committed to keeping this protected. There are privacy and security policies in place to help it maintain data safety, and it uses encryption, although the exact type is not made clear.

The Hartford has been around for a long time, which suggests stability, but there have been some negative customer reviews. These relate to problems with the claims process and customer support. On Trustpilot, the company has an average rating of 1.3/5 (based on 71 reviews as of March 2023), while on the Better Business Bureau, the company’s average rating is 1.05/5.

It’s worth noting that these reviews cover all of The Hartford’s insurance products. When we look specifically at business services, workers’ compensation reviews from The Hartford’s own  website give the service an average of 4.8/5. The general liability insurance is also rated an average of 4.8/5. 

Help and Support

The Hartford’s website has some detailed articles on insurance and how to use it, which is a great place to start if you need support. For phone support related to business insurance, you can get in touch with an agent between 8am and 8pm (ET), Monday-Friday, on 866-467-8730. 

These extended phone hours are useful, but I think it would be helpful to also have a live chat available through the website for urgent queries. 

The Hartford The Hartford Visit Site

Summary

The Hartford has a very wide choice of business insurance solutions, suitable for protecting many kinds of businesses against the cost of all sorts of difficult situations. Its service doesn’t just stop at basic insurance policies, however—it also includes more complex support like risk management, as well as integrated absence monitoring and employee claims processes. 

The Hartford’s insurance isn’t available in every state, and I think it’s a shame there isn’t more support available online. Even the application process needs to be completed over the phone, for example, and there’s no live chat support. 

However, with so many types of insurance on offer, and so much information on the website to help you set up your insurance (including a quiz), it’s worth exploring what The Hartford has to offer. 

Physical Address

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc.

690 Asylum Avenue

Hartford, CT 06155

Methodology

We created this review using The Hartford’s website, plus reviews from Trustpilot and the Better Business Bureau. 

Catherine Miller
Written by
Catherine Miller
Catherine Miller is a lead member of personal finance and pension innovator Maji, where she’s responsible for content creation and running Maji’s personal finance masterclass, among others. She is also a freelance writer in the fields of finance and education, and holds degrees in English and education.
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