In February 2017, one of my earliest blog posts chastised industry TV commercials where the claim scenarios, if you examine them in the context of the policies involved, likely were not covered. As much as I appreciate the focus of Farmers commercials on coverage rather than price, they had a couple of commercials where the claims they say they covered really didn’t appear to be covered.
Just this past week, someone brought a new commercial to my attention that also caused me to, in a Spock-like fashion, raise an eyebrow. Apparently “Flo” is venturing from auto into commercial general liability and workers compensation insurance, as announced in this video [Apparently Flo reads my blog…the video has disappeared from YouTube and TV]. I’ll admit that I have not seen Flo’s commercial lines policies, but let’s consider two claims in the commercial using ISO and NCCI standard forms.
One claim involved a worker dropping and breaking window glass. In the ISO CGL policy, this claim would likely be excluded by at least one of these exclusions:
j.(4) Personal property in the care, custody or control of the insured;
j.(5) That particular part of real property on which you or any contractors or subcontractors working directly or indirectly on your behalf are performing operations, if the “property damage” arises out of those operations; or
j.(6) That particular part of any property that must be restored, repaired or replaced because “your work” was incorrectly performed on it.
(My money is on j.(5).)
Again, this is based on the ISO CGL policy. I have no idea what policy Flo is selling, but based on this commercial, apparently it now covers such property damage claims…whether the policy says so or not.
Another claim involves an injured worker. Flo says, “Workers comp helps you pay for a replacement.” No it doesn’t. Flo goes on to say if you have questions, their “experts” are standing by. Perhaps their “experts” should have been consulted before this commercial was released? Or perhaps Flo’s commercial policies are much better than ISO and NCCI standard policies and do cover these things?
Photo by woodleywonderworks 
Bill Wilson
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Cute commercial though. In the automobile damage scene I guess there’s no deductible applied to that loss either if they are going to replace that mirror.
Those pesky coverage details like exclusions, limits, and deductibles! Good point about the deductible.
Interesting article about insurance advertising:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/it-began-with-a-gecko-mayhem-and-flo-and-peyton-ensued/ar-AAs5sQA?li=BBnbfcN