Summary:  The business auto coverage form is the predominant form for firms insuring their automobile exposures. In auditing an insured under this form—or the related garage and truckers policies of Insurance Services Office (ISO)—careful attention must be given to the numerical symbols listed in the policy declarations designating which autos are insured for the various coverages. What would seem merely to be a small clerical oversight in entering these symbols could have grave consequences for the insured.

Naturally, the numerical symbols cannot be checked until the coverage needs and preferences of the insured are known. The checklist that follows is primarily concerned with discovering these coverage needs. Some commercial accounts, of course, are insured through policies that use devices other than the ISO numerical symbols to key coverage. It is equally important to check for the correctness of those policies' declarations.

In this checklist, each of the common automobile coverages—liability, medical payments, uninsured motorists, no-fault and physical damage—are taken up in turn, largely within the context of the business auto policy. However, most items apply equally to the comparable coverages of the garage and truckers policies and, for that matter, the nonstandard versions of each—although any nonstandard policy should be carefully examined for variations from standard provisions. Some checklist items give additional attention to the automobile insurance needs of specialized businesses—garages, transportation firms, automobile dealers, etc. As to firms with garage exposures, this checklist is concerned only with the automobile exposures that can be insured under that policy; the premises liability exposures are not discussed in this article.