What Is Multiline Insurance?

Elizabeth Rivelli has nearly five years of experience covering insurance for finance publications. She has expertise in various insurance lines, including car insurance, health insurance, travel insurance, life insurance and others. In her writing, she aims to make insurance more approachable and understandable for people in all stages of life. Elizabeth also writes for several insurance company blogs.

Elizabeth Rivelli

Elizabeth RivelliInsurance Writer

Insurance Writer

Les MastersonDeputy Editor, Insurance

Les Masterson is a deputy editor and insurance analyst at Forbes Advisor. He has been a journalist, reporter, editor and content creator for more than 25 years. He has covered insurance for a decade, including auto, home, life and health. Before covering insurance, Les was a news editor and reporter for Patch and Community Newspaper Company and also covered health care, mortgages, credit cards and personal loans for multiple websites.

Fact Checked

Les Masterson

Les MastersonDeputy Editor, Insurance

Deputy Editor, Insurance

Fact Checked

Updated: Oct 10, 2023, 7:00am

Editorial Note: We earn a commission from partner links on Forbes Advisor. Commissions do not affect our editors' opinions or evaluations.

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Multiline insurance decades ago referred to insurance companies that started to combine different types of insurance into one policy.

For example, in the early 1900s, you had to buy liability car insurance, collision insurance and the components that make up comprehensive insurance—such as fire and theft coverage—as separate policies and sometimes from different insurance companies. And before the 1950s, if you were buying home insurance, you had to buy different policies for liability, property, fire, theft and weather damage.

Now home and auto insurance policies combine all these coverage types together into one policy. That’s why the standard car and home insurance policy you buy today may sometimes be called multiline insurance.

But the meaning of multiline insurance has morphed over time. Now it’s more commonly used to describe a common situation where someone owns multiple policies from one insurer. Or, multiline can be used to describe an insurer that sells different types of insurance, such as home, and business insurance.

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What Is Multiline Insurance?

Multiline insurance usually means that you own separate insurance policies sold by the same company.

If a company sells more than one type of insurance, they are a multiline insurance company.

How Does Multiline Insurance Work?

Multiline insurance works by compensating you for problems covered in each of your policies.

Here’s an example: If you bought car insurance, home insurance and small business insurance from the same company, each policy would work as follows.

Car Insurance

A typical full coverage car insurance policy includes bodily injury and property damage liability insurance plus comprehensive and collision coverage. Your liability car insurance pays for property damage and injuries you cause to others in accidents that are your fault. Liability insurance also pays (up to your policy limits) for your legal defense and settlements if you’re sued because of an auto accident.

Comprehensive and collision insurance pay to repair or replace your vehicle if it’s stolen or damaged by an incident covered by your policy. These types of problems include collisions and non-crash events, such as fire, flooding, vandalism, and more.

Home Insurance

Home insurance policies include dwelling coverage and personal liability coverage, plus other useful coverage types.

Dwelling coverage pays to repair or rebuild your house if it’s damaged or destroyed by a problem covered by your policy.
Liability home insurance pays for accidental injuries and property damage that you or members of your household do to others. If you’re sued, liability insurance can also pay for legal bills, settlements and lawsuit judgments up to your policy limits.

Small Business Insurance

A business owners policy (BOP) is a popular type of small business insurance. A BOP includes three types of business insurance, and you can add other types of coverage, too.

Business interruption insurance: This coverage helps you recoup lost income if you can’t operate your business due to problems covered by your policy.
Commercial property insurance: If your business’s physical assets are damaged, lost or stolen due to an issue covered in your policy, this can pay to fix or repair them.
General liability insurance: This type of insurance can provide compensation for a range of claims against you, such as bodily injury and property damage to others, copyright infringement and reputational harm.

Is Bundling a Form of Multiline Insurance?

As multiline insurance has become mainstream, the term “bundling” has grown to refer to owning multiple policies from the same insurer.

For example, when you bundle home and auto insurance, it means you’re purchasing two separate policies from the same insurer, and you often get a discount. Some insurers describe this discount as a multiline discount because you’re buying multiple types of coverage (or lines of coverage) from them, but a more accurate name for it is a multi-policy discount.