CNA Insurance is headquartered in Chicago, IL and has offices throughout the U.S. and Europe. They began in 1897 and originally provided accident and health insurance to railroad employees. In 1956, they acquired National Fire Insurance Company of Hartford, and then in 1963 they merged with American Casualty Company. They took one letter from each company to form the acronym CNA. About 90% of the company is now owned by Loews. CNA insures businesses in all fifty states, and they are one of the largest commercial property and casualty insurer in the U.S., with more than a million businesses and professional insured.
- Pros & Cons of CNA Insurance
- Products Offered: 80/100
- Financial Strength: 90/100
- Customer Satisfaction: 70/100
- Consumer Complaints: 60/100
- Digital Experience: 30/100
Pros & Cons of CNA Insurance
| Pros | Cons |
| – Comprehensive resources on mitigating risks – Excellent financial strength – Wide variety of business insurance | – No online quoting – Clunky, outdated website – Customer feedback is mixed |
Small Business Insurance Products Offered by CNA Insurance
CNA offers a wide variety of business insurance policies. They are the largest provider of professional liability insurance or also called malpractice insurance or errors and omissions insurance (E&O). Below is the complete list of business insurance policies they offer:
- Business interruption
- Cyber risk
- Commercial auto
- Commercial general liability
- Business Owner Policy or BOP
- Equipment breakdown
- Inland marine
- Professional liability
- Ocean marine
- Commercial Property
- Surety
- Umbrella and excess
- Fidelity and commercial crime
- Workers compensation
- Directors and officers
- Management liability
CNA doesn’t have online quoting; you will have to call to be referred to an agent. They are one of the leading providers of professional liability insurance. They also have a BOP called CNA Connect, which combines general liability with property insurance and professional liability.
When you go to the website, you can select your industry. CNA provides insurance for:
- Construction
- Education
- Finance
- Healthcare
- Manufacturing
- Real estate
- Retail
- Technology
- Wholesale distribution
CNA also features a “School of risk control excellence (sorce) on its website. You can use their extensive library of tools, guides, checklists, webinars and others to help you manage your exposures. This reduces the risks you will be sued at all. It will help you evaluate risks and identify which ones you can reduce or eliminate. It’s really the best part of the website.
There are five pages of recorded classes, podcasts and webinars you can look at, with topics such as “Patient Safety in Ambulatory Settings” and “Opioids from a Defense Attorney’s Perspective.”
To compare several online quotes in one place conveniently, you may want to consider working with a digital broker like CoverWallet, Simply Business, or commercialinsurance.net. They will be able to provide you with several quotes of their partners after you fill in your information once.
Financial Strength Rating of CNA Insurance
A.M. Best gives CNA corporation an A (Excellent) with a stable outlook. You want a company with solid financial strength so you know they have the resources they need to pay claims.
Customer Satisfaction Rating of CNA Insurance
CNA does not appear on J.D. Power’s U.S. Small Commercial Insurance study, so we will have to consider other sources.
CNA has been accredited by the BBB since 2017 and they earn an A+ rating. There are five one-star reviews and ten complaints about CNA on the website. Most of them concern having a claim denied or not being paid settlement money quickly enough. All of the details of the complaints are unavailable to read, but four concern billing/collections and six are with a product/service.
Consumer Complaints Rating of CNA Insurance
The NAIC does not seem to have a listing for CNA financial corporation, which is too bad, as the NAIC is an excellent source for keeping track of how many complaints a company receives.
If you look on Yelp, you will see 46 complaints about CNA insurance. Many of these mention the difficulty of getting CNA to pay a claim. Granted, Yelp is a website for people who want to complain, but it’s something to be aware of.
Digital Experience Rating of CNA Insurance
CNA doesn’t offer online quoting for many types of insurance, but you may be able to get a quote for either a BOP or workers compensation insurance. For example, this quote is for a computer programming business with two full time employees and $120,000 in revenue.
It should be noted that once you get this quote, you will have to call and speak with an agent anyway—you can’t just click and get insurance at CNA, like you can with some other online insurance companies. There is also no online claims reporting for management liability insurance, cargo, marine (inland or ocean), some professional liability fields, or long term care (which they used to offer, but no longer do). You can pay your bill online, so that’s a plus.
On the whole, the website is clunky and antiquated. It feels like they launched it in the 1990’s and just never updated it.
To compare several online quotes in one place conveniently, you may want to consider working with a digital broker like CoverWallet, Simply Business, or commercialinsurance.net. They will be able to provide you with several quotes of their partners after you fill in your information.
Last Thoughts
CNA is the largest provider of professional liability insurance and since they’ve been in business for over a hundred years, they should know what they’re doing. If you need professional liability insurance, and maybe another type of insurance and don’t mind an out-of-date website, CNA could work for you. There is some online quoting, although to purchase the insurance you’ll have to speak to an agent. It’s certainly not as easy as some companies make buying business insurance these days, but if you shop around and CNA gives you a good price, they may be worth it.