What Is an Insurance Declarations Page?

Andrew Marder is a former lead writer for NerdWallet focusing on insurance and data analysis. He has over a decade of experience in finance, with previous roles at Barclays, The Motley Fool and Gartner. His work has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post and other national news outlets. He has presented his work at the Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo and Accountex.

Lisa Green leads the life insurance team and oversees insurance-focused data journalism at NerdWallet. A professional journalist since high school, she was an insurance writer at NerdWallet before becoming an assigning editor. Previously, Lisa spent more than 20 years as an editor at The Tennessean in Nashville, where she led business and consumer coverage for several years. At The Tennessean, she was part of a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist team for coverage of devastating floods in Middle Tennessee. Her work has also won awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Society of Professional Journalists. Lisa is an alumna of the Wharton Seminars for Business Journalists at the University of Pennsylvania. She has also studied data journalism with the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting, business editing with the American Press Institute and writing, editing and news research with the Poynter Institute. In addition to her work at NerdWallet, Lisa is a real estate investor and has taught a seminar on how to earn college scholarships. She is based in Nashville.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents

An insurance policy is only useful if you understand what it covers and when you can use it. Does your homeowners policy cover hurricanes? What’s the deductible on your auto insurance? When can you count on your insurance company to step up and help you out?

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An insurance declarations page is a summary of your insurance policy in one or two pages. It lets you know what’s covered, who’s covered and how much you’re going to pay for coverage.

Declarations pages are also called “dec pages” for short. There are differences between auto insurance, homeowners insurance and renters insurance declarations pages.

Auto insurance declarations page

An auto insurance declarations page is an overview of your car insurance policy, but it doesn’t contain all the fine points. Those are laid out in other sections of the policy, which go into much greater detail.

Your car insurance declarations page will contain information about:

These facts are all presented at a summary level. For instance, your coverage limits might list bodily injury liability coverage of $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident. The declarations page won’t say that this coverage doesn’t apply when you intentionally attempt to harm someone or that you won’t be covered when using your car for a business.

Exceptions are laid out in the policy details pages. You’ll know you’ve found the details of your policy when you find page after page of numbered paragraphs, subsections and sections where words like “you” are defined.

The dec page is meant to be a quick overview of your policy. It’s also an easy place to start understanding all of the parts of your coverage. You can see at a glance if you have the coverage you need and how much you’re currently paying.

Your declarations page also might contain contact details for your agent, information about your premium payment schedule and names of any drivers specifically excluded from the policy.

Whenever you compare car insurance quotes , it makes sense to keep a copy of your declarations page nearby.

Homeowners insurance declarations page

A homeowners insurance declarations page is similar in layout to an auto insurance declarations page. You’ll see details about your policy such as who and what’s covered. You’ll also see your premium and any discounts you’ve received.

Renters insurance declarations page

The declarations page for renters insurance looks very much like a homeowners insurance declarations page. The main difference is in the types of coverage you’ll see and the lack of any mortgage details.

A renters insurance declarations page will cover:

The main difference between renters and homeowners insurance is that renters insurance covers the stuff in your rental, like your clothes, furniture and electronics but not the property you live in. Landlords will have insurance to cover the building in case of fire or another catastrophe.

Renters insurance also covers you for any damage you might cause to the property or to people on the property.

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Andrew is a former insurance and data studies writer at NerdWallet. Over more than a decade, he's worked in everything from banks to tech startups. See full bio.

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