Car Insurance Abbreviations, Explained

Pull up your dec page or your ID card and it looks like alphabet soup. BI, PD, UM, UIM, PIP, COMP, COLL. None of it gets explained anywhere on the actual document, so here's what each one means, in plain language, no legal jargon.

Liability coverage

BI, Bodily Injury. Pays for the other person's injuries when you're at fault. This is the part of your policy that covers someone else's medical bills, not yours.

PD, Property Damage. Pays to fix or replace the other person's car, fence, mailbox, whatever you hit, when you're at fault. Also not for your own car.

These two almost always show up together as a set of three numbers, like 50/100/50 on a dec page. That reads as up to $50,000 per person for injuries, up to $100,000 total per accident, and up to $50,000 for property damage.

Coverage for damage to your own car

COMP, Comprehensive. Covers damage to your own car from something other than a crash: theft, vandalism, hail, hitting a deer, a cracked windshield.

COLL, Collision. Covers damage to your own car from hitting something, another car, a guardrail, a tree, no matter who's at fault. Both COMP and COLL carry their own separate deductible.

Coverage if the other driver doesn't have enough

UM, Uninsured Motorist. Steps in when the driver who hit you has no insurance at all. Without this, you'd be paying your own medical bills and repairs out of pocket, even though the accident wasn't your fault.

UIM, Underinsured Motorist. Steps in when the other driver does have insurance, but their limits aren't enough to cover what you actually lost. Say their policy maxes out at $25,000 and your medical bills come to $60,000, UIM covers the gap.

UMPD, Uninsured Motorist Property Damage. The property damage version of UM, covers your car specifically when an uninsured driver hits it.

Medical coverage that isn't liability

PIP, Personal Injury Protection. Pays for your own medical bills, lost wages, and sometimes funeral costs, no matter who caused the accident. It's required in some states and optional in others, and where it's optional, you can usually reject it in writing, though most people don't realize that's what happened until they need it and it's not there.

MedPay, Medical Payments. Similar to PIP but narrower, it only covers medical bills, not lost wages or other costs. Some states require it, some don't, and it's sometimes used alongside PIP rather than instead of it.

Terms you'll see outside your policy itself

ACV, Actual Cash Value. What your car is actually worth, used to decide your payout if it's totaled or stolen. Our total loss guide covers how this gets calculated.

CLUE, Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange. A shared database insurers use to see your claims history when you apply for a new policy. It's not your credit report, it's a separate record just for insurance claims.

SR-22. Not actually insurance, it's a form your insurer files with the state proving you carry the minimum required coverage, usually required after a serious violation like a DUI or driving uninsured.

FR-44. A stricter version of the SR-22 used in a couple of states, requiring higher coverage limits than the standard minimum.

MVR, Motor Vehicle Report. Your official driving record, pulled by insurers when they price your policy or investigate a claim.

DEC page, Declarations page. The summary page at the front of your policy packet listing your coverages, limits, deductibles, and policy period. If you only read one page of your policy, this is the one.

The bottom line

None of these letters are complicated once you know what they stand for, the confusion is really just that nobody explains them before handing you the paperwork. Keep this list handy next time your dec page shows up looking like a wall of acronyms, and check our full glossary for anything not covered here.