Opinion
This appeal, arising out of two consolidated declaratory judgment actions, involves a dispute between a car rental company, Hertz Corporation (Hertz), and an insurance provider, Farmers Texas County Mutual (Farmers), as to which company had the primary obligation to provide automobile liability coverage when an individual with personal automobile *537insurance from Farmers was involved in an accident while driving a car rented from Hertz.1 Farmers appeals from the judgment of the trial court, which concluded that Hertz could, and in fact did, contractually establish that its obligation was secondary to that of Farmers. We conclude that Farmers’ coverage is primary, and, accordingly, affirm the judgment of the trial court.
The following facts are undisputed. Mariano Nasser and Vijay Sharma each rented a vehicle from Hertz. Both men signed Hertz rental agreements in which they declined to purchase Hertz’ liability insurance supplement.2 In so declining, they agreed, pursuant to the terms of the rental agreement, that their personal insurance would be primary. Sharma and Nasser then were involved in separate traffic accidents with third parties on May 20,2001, and on February 21,2002, respectively, while driving the vehicles they had rented. In both cases, *538the third parties involved in the accidents filed actions against Hertz and Sharma and Nasser, respectively, to recover damages for the injuries the third parties had sustained. At the time of the accidents, Nasser was covered by a personal insurance policy issued by Farmers,3 and Sharma was covered by a personal insurance policy issued by an affiliate of Farmers, Farmers Insurance Company.4 Farmers filed a declaratory judgment *539action against Hertz in the case arising out of Nasser’s accident, and Hertz filed a declaratory judgment action against Farmers in the case arising out of Sharma’s accident. Because of the factual similarity of the cases, the trial court consolidated the actions. Subsequently, Hertz and Farmers each filed motions for summary judgment claiming that the other should be deemed primarily responsible for liability coverage for the accidents. The court denied the motions for summary judgment on the basis of its determination that material issues of fact remained, specifically, those pertaining to Hertz’ self-insurance filing and the representations contained therein regarding minimum liability coverage on its rental vehicles. The court then concluded that a trial was necessary to determine the “legal impact” of the self-insurance filings and state statutes and regulations.
After a trial to the court, the court rendered judgments in the consolidated cases in favor of Hertz, finding that, under the terms of the Hertz rental agreement and Farmers’ insurance policies, and in accordance with the decision of this court in Hertz Corp. v. Federal Ins. Co., 245 Conn. 374, 713 A.2d 820 (1998), the liability coverage provided by Farmers was primary and the coverage provided by Hertz was secondary. The court determined that, by declining to purchase the liability insurance supplement from Hertz, the renters had agreed that their valid and collectible liability coverage from Farmers would be primary for any accident involv*540ing the vehicles they had rented from Hertz. The court further concluded that this interpretation conformed to the Farmers’ policies because, according to then-terms, the coverage Farmers provided for vehicles not owned by the insured was excess only to other applicable liability insurance, which the renters in this case had declined to purchase.
Farmers appealed from the judgment of the trial court to the Appellate Court, and we transferred the appeal to this court pursuant to General Statutes § 51-199 (c) and Practice Book § 65-1.5 There are two related issues on appeal. The first is whether, under our statutory and regulatory scheme, Hertz is required to provide primary liability coverage on its rented vehicles. If we answer this question in the negative, we then must determine whether the trial court properly considered the Hertz rental agreement in determining the priority of coverage as between Hertz and Farmers in the present case.
Farmers claims that the statutory scheme mandates that Hertz, as owner of the vehicle, is “expressly and exclusively” responsible for providing liability coverage, and that the trial court improperly determined that Hertz was under no such obligation. Farmers further contends that the trial court improperly relied on Hertz’ rental agreement to determine the order of coverage, rather than on Hertz’ self-insurance filing with the state. Hertz responds that the trial court properly determined that it was not statutorily obligated to provide primary *541liability coverage on its rented vehicles and that, pursuant to its rental agreement, Hertz’ coverage was secondary to that provided by Nasser’s insurance policy with Farmers. We agree with Hertz.
I
We turn first to Farmers’ contention that Hertz is obligated by our statutory and regulatory scheme to provide primary liability coverage on its rented vehicles. We begin with the standard of review and the applicable legal principles guiding our analysis. “Because the interpretation of . . . [statutes and] regulations presents a question of law, our review is plenary.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Jewett City Savings Bank v. Franklin, 280 Conn. 274, 278, 907 A.2d 67 (2006). “When construing a statute, [o]ur fundamental objective is to ascertain and give effect to the apparent intent of the legislature. ... In other words, we seek to determine, in a reasoned manner, the meaning of the statutory language as applied to the facts of [the] case, including the question of whether the language actually does apply. ... In seeking to determine that meaning, General Statutes § 1-2z directs us first to consider the text of the statute itself and its relationship to other statutes. If, after examining such text and considering such relationship, the meaning of such text is plain and unambiguous and does not yield absurd or unworkable results, extratextual evidence of the meaning of the statute shall not be considered. . . . When a statute is not plain and unambiguous, we also look for interpretive guidance to the legislative history and circumstances surrounding its enactment, to the legislative policy it was designed to implement, and to its relationship to existing legislation and common law principles governing the same general subject matter . . . .” (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Kinsey v. Pacific Employers Ins. Co., 277 Conn. 398, 405, 891 A.2d 959 (2006). With these principles in mind, we review the applicable statutes *542and regulations governing Connecticut’s motor vehicle liability insurance scheme.
Our statutory and regulatory scheme guarantees coverage for legal liability incurred in the use of motor vehicles and allocates the responsibility for that coverage to the owner of the vehicle. General Statutes § 38a-371 describes the mandatory security requirements for the vehicle owner under the state’s no-fault motor vehicle insurance scheme. That section provides in relevant part that “[t]he owner of a private passenger motor vehicle required to be registered in this state shall provide and continuously maintain throughout the registration period security in accordance with sections 38a-334 to 38a-343, inclusive [setting forth, inter alia, minimum insurance policy coverage mandated in conformity with regulatory requirements].” General Statutes § 38a-371 (a) (1). To ensure that a vehicle owner complies with security requirements, General Statutes § 14-12b6 prohibits the registration of a vehicle absent proof of the owner’s requisite coverage, and § 38a-371 (e)7 ensures *543that, even if the owner allows insurance coverage to lapse on a vehicle, the owner will still be liable for damages in the event of an accident.
Other statutes dictate that an owner is not relieved of liability simply because the owner is not the operator of the vehicle. General Statutes § 14-213b8 proscribes operation of an uninsured vehicle, and places responsibility for adherence to that rule on the owner, even when the owner is not the operator of the vehicle. In addition, General Statutes § 14-154a addresses owners who rent or lease their vehicles, providing in relevant part: “(a) Any person renting or leasing to another any motor vehicle owned by him shall be liable for any damage to any person or property caused by the operation of such motor vehicle while so rented or leased, to the same extent as the operator would have been liable if he had also been the owner. . . .”
The legislature, therefore, has made clear, through its use of mandatory language and mutually reinforcing statutes, that, as a general matter, the owner of a vehicle registered in Connecticut is responsible for maintaining liability insurance on that vehicle.9 Pursuant to General *544Statutes §§ 38a-371 (c) and 14-129, Hertz elected to pro*545vide that security through self-insurance.10 This court has determined that “the funding mechanism by which an owner of vehicles decides to meet the requirements of Connecticut insurance law is irrelevant to the obligation of that funding entity to comply with such requirements, [and] that self-insurance is the functional equivalent of commercial insurance.” Hertz Corp. v. Federal Ins. Co., supra, 245 Conn. 378 n.4. Thus, in choosing and being approved for self-insurance, Hertz has demonstrated that, in accordance with General Statutes § 38a-335,11 it independently maintains funds suffi*546cient to insure the minimum liability coverage imposed by Connecticut law on its vehicles. Additionally, pursuant to General Statutes § 14-15, Hertz was required to procure a license to engage in the business of renting its vehicles and, as a part of the licensing process, to submit a sworn application to the commissioner of motor vehicles that included, inter aha, “proof of financial responsibility satisfactory to the commissioner, as provided by section 14-112 or 14-129 . . . .” General Statutes § 14-15 (a). Thus, there is no doubt that Hertz complied with the applicable requirements and maintained liability coverage on the vehicle that Nasser had rented.12
We discern no provision in the statutes discussed previously, however, expressly mandating that Hertz, as the owner of the vehicle involved in the accident, has the primary obligation to provide liability coverage for any damages incurred in the use of its vehicle. We do not construe the legislature’s requirement that vehicle owners maintain liability coverage as requiring that such owner coverage be primary if other coverage that satisfies the statutory minimum standards is available. It is well settled that “we decline to engraft additional *547requirements onto clear statutory language. . . . [I]n the absence of any indication of the legislature’s intent concerning this issue, we cannot engraft language onto the statute . . . .” (Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Dinan v. Marchand, 279 Conn. 558, 577, 903 A.2d 201 (2006). Stated conversely, the legislature has not prohibited an owner who has complied with its obligations to maintain coverage from contracting to assume secondary liability if another party is available to assume primary coverage.
In fact, under § 38a-334-5 (g) of the Regulations of Connecticut State Agencies,13 the insurance commissioner expressly has authorized insurers to prorate or reallocate loss. Accordingly, this court previously has recognized that insurers may allocate primary responsibility for coverage through the use of “other insurance” clauses, such as that contained in the policy Farmers issued to Nasser. See footnote 3 of this opinion. In Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. CNA Ins. Co., 221 Conn. 779, 781, 606 A.2d 990 (1992), we confronted overlapping “ ‘other insurance’ ” provisions when the driver of a vehicle involved in an accident was covered both by the vehicle owner’s policy and the policy of her sister and brother-in-law, with whom the driver was residing at the time. In that case, we concluded that “ ‘other insurance’ clauses are valid for the purpose of establishing the order of coverage between insurers, as long as their enforcement does not compromise coverage for the insured.” Id., 783. We noted, furthermore, that “[p]ublic policy is not violated when ‘other insurance’ clauses are used for the purpose of establishing the *548order of payment between insurers. When the insured is afforded full indemnification for a loss, there is no public policy issue controlling how insurers divide coverage among themselves.” Id., 785; see also O’Brien v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 235 Conn. 837, 841, 669 A.2d 1221 (1996).
The fact that Hertz is a self-insurer does not affect its ability to establish the order of payment among other insurers; self-insurers are treated as the equivalent of commercial insurers under our statutory scheme. Pursuant to General Statutes § 38a-363 (b), “ ‘[i]nsurer’ or ‘insurance company’ includes a self-insurer ... as provided by section 38a-371.” See also Conzo v. Aetna Ins. Co., 243 Conn. 677, 683, 705 A.2d 1020 (1998) (“upon electing to become a self-insurer, West Haven . . . became an insurer”). In addition, § 38a-371 (c) (3) requires a self-insurer to provide payment for all liabilities covered by residual liability insurance as well as other obligations imposed by that section “substantially equivalent to those afforded by a policy of insurance that would comply with this section.” See footnote 10 of this opinion. This court has recognized that, “[t]hese statutory provisions explicitly reflect the legislature’s intent to create a uniform scheme of insurance protection notwithstanding the source of that protection. That is, irrespective of whether the protection is provided by a program of commercial insurance or self-insurance, within the context of the mandatory insurance schemes, we can discern no distinction based upon the means of funding those benefits.” Hertz Corp. v. Federal Ins. Co., supra, 245 Conn. 378-79 n.4. Thus Hertz, as a self-insured corporation, has the same statutory obligations as a commercial insurance company, and likewise may bargain to reallocate primary responsibility for liability coverage of its rented vehicles.
Upon examination of the statutes, regulations, and case law of the state, it is clear that the essential concern *549of our motor vehicle liability insurance scheme is guaranteeing minimum coverage for personal injury and property damage resulting from automobile accidents, not the assignment of that coverage to a particular party. Having concluded that Hertz is not statutorily mandated to provide primary coverage on its vehicles, we now turn to whether the trial court properly considered the Hertz rental agreement in its determination of the priority of coverage in the present case.
II
Farmers contends that it was improper for the trial court to have considered the Hertz rental agreement in determining the priority of coverage for Nasser’s rented vehicle. Farmers claims that, because Hertz was required to file its self-insurance policy with the insurance commissioner for approval, the subsequent rental agreement, which was not filed with the insurance commissioner, cannot be deemed to have modified the coverage in the self-insurance policy, and thus should not have been considered in the determination of the outcome in this case. Hertz contends that the rental agreement is the controlling document for the purposes of determining priority of coverage. We agree with Hertz.
We consider first whether, because Hertz was required to file its self-insurance policy with the insurance commissioner, the rental agreement, which had not been filed with the insurance commissioner, validly can control the liability coverage of Hertz’ rental vehicles. Although we have not addressed this precise issue in the past, we confronted a similar situation in Piersa v. Phoenix Ins. Co., 273 Conn. 519, 521, 871 A.2d 992 (2005), in which the “sole issue . . . [was] whether a self-insured municipal employer may reduce the limits *550of its uninsured motorist coverage14 by the amount of workers’ compensation benefits paid, without having created a writing effectuating such a reduction.” Although the facts in Piersa differ from those in the present case, the principles underlying our conclusion pertain.
In Piersa, a police officer brought an action against his employer, the city of Hartford (city), seeking compensation for injuries he sustained when an uninsured motor vehicle collided with his police cruiser. Id. Although the city, a self-insured entity, compensated the officer for his personal injuries, it refused to provide the officer with uninsured motorist benefits because it claimed that, pursuant to § 38a-334-6 (d) (1) (B) of the Regulations of Connecticut State Agencies,15 the insurance coverage on the police vehicle was offset by the workers’ compensation benefits received by the officer. Id., 522, 525-26. Prior to the accident in that case, the city had filed a letter with the insurance commissioner, pursuant to § 38a-371 (c),16 stating that it intended to provide self-insurance for its automobile liability and specifying that it would provide the required uninsured motorist coverage minimum of $20,000 per person and $40,000 per occurrence. Id., 522. The letter did not invoke, however, any reduction in those limits permitted by statute or regulation, including the reduction *551that the city later sought to invoke by offsetting the officer’s workers’ compensation payment in that case. Id. Thus, neither the officer, the insurance commissioner, nor any other potential claimant would have had any notice that the city intended to offset its coverage in the amount of any workers’ compensation benefits paid to a claimant. The city argued that, because § 38a-334-6 (d) (1) (B) of the regulations permitted it to reduce its uninsured motorist coverage in this manner, it was not required to create a written document specifying that it intended to invoke this permissive reduction. Id., 523, 527. We disagreed and concluded that “the language of the regulation must be interpreted so as to require a municipal self-insurer that wishes to impose permitted limits on its obligations as such to do so by a written document that appropriately provides for reduction of limits.” Id., 527. We reasoned that this was the proper result because it was “consistent with the [city’s] obligations as an insurer under § 38a-371 (c) and with [the] uniform legislative scheme [which does not differentiate between commercial and self-insurers] to require the [city] to create a written document specifying its selected reductions in limits, because a commercial insurer must specify those reductions in limits in its written insurance policy in order to take advantage of them. Similarly, it would be inconsistent with those obligations and that scheme to permit the [city] to take advantage of all of those limits by remaining silent with respect to them, because a commercial insurer would not be able to do so in that fashion.” Id., 528.
At the outset, we note that the rules applying to the city as a self-insured municipality are not necessarily the same as those governing other, nonmunicipal self-insured entities. See General Statutes § 38a-371 (c). More importantly, in the present case Hertz did specify its coverage terms in a written document, namely the rental contract that was executed by Nasser. See foot*552note 2 of this opinion. Accordingly, applying our holding in Piersa to the facts in the present case, we conclude that the rental agreement validly modified the liability insurance coverage that Hertz was required to provide on the vehicle that Nasser rented. In Piersa, elaborating on the written documentation necessary to effect limitations on coverage, we emphasized that: “there is no particular form that a self-insured entity must use in order to take advantage of the permitted reductions in limits. The required written document may be part of its written notice to the commissioner of its election to be self-insured .... Or ... it may be as part of a written document that the self-insured entity maintains in its files. Nor is it necessary for the document to repeat verbatim the language of the regulation that the defendant intends to adopt as limits on its coverage. . . . [The self-insured entity] could adopt those limits by appropriate language indicating incorporation by reference. The purpose of the document is to require the self-insured entity to fulfill its obligation as insurer by providing a kind of rough equivalence to the obligation of a commercial insurer to limit its coverage by appropriate language in its policy of insurance. Any document that reasonably fulfills that purpose will suffice.” (Emphasis added.) Piersa v. Phoenix Ins. Co., supra, 273 Conn. 531. Applying this substantive standard to the rental contract, we conclude that Hertz properly specified the terms of Nasser’s coverage in that document.
Moreover, unlike the defendant in Piersa, Hertz did not seek to reduce the dollar amount of liability protection it would supply under the prioritization provision, but rather it sought merely to clarify the order of coverage of overlapping policies. As we have discussed in part I of this opinion, Hertz, like any commercial insurer, was permitted to specify that its liability coverage would not be primary in the event that Nasser *553declined, as he did, to purchase that coverage as part of his rental. Thus, in executing the rental contract, Nasser agreed that his personal automobile coverage provided by Farmers would be primary for the rented vehicle. To deny the enforcement of that provision, bargained for by the parties, would be against the standards according to which we evaluate contracts in this state. See United Illuminating Co. v. Wisvest-Connecticut, LLC, 259 Conn. 665, 674, 791 A.2d 546 (2002) (“[t]he law of contract interpretation militates against interpreting a contract in a way that renders a provision superfluous”); Hertz Corp. v. Federal Ins. Co., supra, 245 Conn. 381-82 (“The determinative question is the intent of the parties, that is, what coverage the . . . [insured] expected to receive and what the [insurer] was to provide, as disclosed by the provisions of the policy. ... If the terms of the policy are clear and unambiguous, then the language, from which the intention of the parties is to be deduced, must be accorded its natural and ordinary meaning.” [Citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.]).
Although we agree with the trial court that the rental agreement properly may be considered as the controlling document in the present case, we briefly address Farmers’ claim that we should nonetheless conclude that the prioritization provisions contained in the contract are unauthorized by regulation and are therefore invalid. Initially, we note that, for the reasons we have stated in part I of this opinion, we already have concluded that it is not inconsistent with the statutory and regulatory scheme for Hertz to provide secondary coverage on its rented vehicles.
Moreover, this court previously has addressed the valid manner by which insurers may limit uninsured motorist coverage according to permissive statutory and regulatory grants. In Chmielewski v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 218 Conn. 646, 591 A.2d 101 (1991), *554we considered an insurer’s attempt to limit its uninsured motorist coverage based on a specific regulation not at issue in the present case. We concluded that “[w]hen an insurer seeks to limit its liability for uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage based on [a] regulation ... it may do so only to the extent that the regulation ‘expressly authorizes.’ ... In order for a policy exclusion to be ‘expressly authorized’ by the statute, there must be substantial congruence between the statutory provision and the policy provision.” (Citations omitted.) Id., 674. Thus, in determining the propriety of provisions in insurance policies purporting to limit coverage pursuant to applicable insurance regulations, we look for “substantial congruence” between the regulation and the policy provision at issue. See Giglio v. American Economy Ins. Co., 278 Conn. 794, 804 n.9, 900 A.2d 27 (2006) (“[i]n order for apolicy exclusion to be expressly authorized by [a] statute [or regulation], there must be substantial congruence between the statutory [or regulatory] provision and the policy provision” [internal quotation marks omitted]); see also Vitti v. Allstate Ins. Co., 245 Conn. 169, 176, 713 A.2d 1269 (1998); Lowrey v. Valley Forge Ins. Co., 224 Conn. 152, 156, 617 A.2d 454 (1992). In the present case, the language of the Hertz rental agreement is substantially congruent with the authorization in § 38a-334-5 (g) of the regulations allowing a policy to provide for secondary liability coverage as long as the minimum statutory coverage is afforded between all applicable policies. See footnote 13 of this opinion. Therefore, we conclude that the prioritization provision in the Hertz rental contract is valid and enforceable for determining liability coverage on the vehicle at issue.
Finally, we note that other jurisdictions considering this issue have concluded that rental agreements should be given their full effect in determining the priority of coverage. See, e.g., Farm Bureau Mutual Ins. Co. v.
*555 Alamo Rent A Car, Inc., 319 Ill. App. 3d 382, 389, 744 N.E.2d 300 (2000) (“Neither the language contained in the [v]ehicle [c]ode nor the public policy behind it, which is to protect the public, bars contract terms that purport to shift primary liability under insurance policies. Thus, we cannot ignore the laws and public policy of the state, which permit freedom of contracting between competent parties. . . . Because the parties may properly contract as to which insurer is responsible for primary coverage as long as statutory minimum requirements are met, we hold that, as a matter of law, the rental agreement . . . was valid and enforceable, shifting primary coverage to [the lessee’s personal automobile insurer].” [Citation omitted.]); U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty Co. v. Hanover Ins. Co., 417 Mass. 651, 655-57, 632 N.E.2d 402 (1994) (in conflict between excess clause in personal insurer’s policy and “ ‘super-escape’ ” clause in rental contract that denied coverage “when other valid and collectible insurance, either primary or excess, [was] available,” court concluded that “explicit and comprehensive” language of super-escape clause invoked excess coverage provided by personal insurer, making latter solely responsible for loss [emphasis in original]); New Hampshire Indemnity Co. v. Budget Rent-A-Car Systems, Inc., 148 Wash. 2d 929, 933 n.1, 936, 64 P.3d 1239 (2003) (in similar dispute over rental car liability coverage, holding that “[r]ental car agreements are treated as stand-alone policies of vehicle insurance,” that “parties may, consistent with the law, contract for automobile insurance coverage that becomes available only after all other insurance available, including excess insurance, is exhausted” and that vehicle operator’s personal insurance was primary over rental company’s secondary coverage). The guidance of our sister courts further persuades us of the prudence of our conclusion.
Finally, we note that according to the terms of its own policy; see footnote 3 of this opinion; Farmers has *556agreed to provide primary coverage for its insured’s liability when no other applicable liability coverage exists. Because Nasser expressly declined to purchase the liability insurance supplement from Hertz, there is no “other applicable liability insurance” to render the coverage provided by the Farmers policy secondary. Thus, Farmers must cover the loss in this case. Accord Hertz Corp. v. Federal Ins. Co., supra, 245 Conn. 383 (“it is by virtue of [the insurer’s] own policy language that its coverage is primary with respect to policies, such as that provided by Hertz, which are written specifically to provide excess liability coverage”).
The judgment is affirmed.
In this opinion the other justices concurred.