The endorsement forms, by number

A form number on a certificate is not the form

Your subcontract names forms. The certificate that comes back names almost none of them. You get a line in the description box instead — “additional insured and waiver of subrogation per written contract” — typed by the agent who issued the page. That is a claim about a document, not the document.

So the request goes to the issuing agent, not to your sub. The agency in the upper-left box wrote the certificate and holds the policy file. Ask for the endorsement page, by number and edition. A sub asked for “proof we are additional insured” forwards another certificate, because that is the only document they have. How to verify a certificate of insurance is the procedure; this page is the reference you hold open while you run it.

Then read the endorsement when it arrives instead of filing it — the qualifiers live in the body, not in the number. And put the number into the requirement, because what you require before a sub starts is only checkable if it is specific enough to fail.

The forms, by number

CG 00 01 is the coverage form itself, and most of the endorsements below amend it. Two do not: CG 02 24 changes the cancellation notice in the policy conditions, and WC 00 03 13 sits on the workers' compensation policy entirely. The table describes the shape of each form; the page in front of you governs.

The edition date changed what additional insured means

Look at the bottom of any ISO endorsement. There is a four-digit edition date printed on it — CG 20 10 04 13 is the April 2013 edition. Two subs can both hand you “a CG 20 10” and hand you materially different coverage.

The 1985 edition granted additional-insured status for liability “arising out of” the named insured's work for you. Nothing in it limited that to work still in progress. That is broad language. A claim connected to the sub's work could reach the endorsement even where the sub was not at fault. An endorsement of that vintage also reached claims surfacing after closeout.

Then the 10 93 edition carved completed operations out of CG 20 10. ISO issued CG 20 37 alongside it in 1993 so that cover could be bought back as a separate form, which is why one additional insured endorsement stopped being enough more than thirty years ago.

The 2004 revision changed something different. The trigger became liability “caused, in whole or in part, by” the named insured's acts or omissions, so coverage follows the sub's fault rather than the sub's presence on the job. Where the negligence turns out to be yours alone, a modern CG 20 10 may not respond — often the exact claim you assumed it was there for.

The 04 13 editions added three further limits, and the first two point back at your own paperwork rather than at the insurer's:

• Coverage will not be broader than what your written contract requires. A thin insurance clause now caps a generous endorsement.
• The limit is the lesser of what your contract requires and what the policy carries. Requiring $5M from a sub who bought $1M gets you $1M.
• Everything applies only to the extent permitted by law — the form's deference to state anti-indemnity statutes.

Two waivers, two policies, two carriers

The general liability waiver is CG 24 04. The workers' compensation waiver is WC 00 03 13, an NCCI form on a different policy, usually written by a different carrier — and in the states that run their own rating bureau, California among them, on that state's own form rather than NCCI's. Nothing about holding the first produces the second.

This is a routine miss rather than an exotic one. You collect a CG 24 04, mark the sub as having a waiver, and the comp policy has none. The certificate does not rescue you, because SUBR WVD is a column with a separate box on each coverage line — read the box on the workers' compensation row, not the page as a whole.

Both forms come blanket or scheduled, and that distinction belongs to the waiver of subrogation page. Two things belong here instead. The comp carrier charges a premium for the waiver, so a sub pushing back is usually reacting to a real cost rather than stalling. And a few states restrict waivers on comp entirely — ask your agent before the clause goes in.

The cancellation box versus the cancellation endorsement

The ACORD 25 has a cancellation paragraph and it reads like a promise. It says notice will be delivered “in accordance with the policy provisions”. Those provisions belong to the policy, and they run to the first named insured — your sub. What that clause is actually worth is its own page.

The endorsements are what change the provisions. CG 02 24 lengthens the notice the insurer owes the policyholder, which is how a subcontract's “30 days” becomes something written onto the policy rather than typed onto a certificate. Notice reaching you directly takes a separate third-party notice endorsement, and it works by scheduling you by name.

Scheduled is the operative word. There is no blanket version that quietly picks up everyone your sub does business with, so a clause in your subcontract does not create one. Plenty of carriers decline to add third parties at all — find that out before the job, not after a lapse.

So plan on not getting it. The reliable dates are the coverage expiries already printed on the certificate, and running them is your job. Sealinn counts down to the general liability, workers compensation and auto dates on each certificate and chases the renewal ahead of each — so a comp policy ending before the certificate's own date is chased on its own timetable rather than riding on the GL date. An umbrella expiry is not among the fields read off the form, so that one stays with you.

ACORD 25, 27 and 28 — and what a binder is not

The ACORD 25 is the Certificate of Liability Insurance, the one-page summary your subs send. It says so about itself: the form “does not affirmatively or negatively amend, extend or alter the coverage afforded by the policies below”. What a certificate proves is the argument; reading it box by box is the mechanics. The rest of the family gets misread more:

• ACORD 24 — Certificate of Property Insurance. The same idea as the 25, for property policies rather than liability ones.
• ACORD 27 and ACORD 28 — Evidence of Property Insurance and Evidence of Commercial Property Insurance. Both are written for a lender rather than for a contractor, and the 28 carries the detail. Builder's risk evidence usually arrives on one of these.

A binder is a different animal, and for once the difference favors you. A binder is temporary coverage issued under the agent's authority, so it grants cover where a certificate only reports it. It also expires, typically inside 30 to 90 days, and it usually predates the endorsements you asked for. Take one as a bridge, then diary the replacement.

A declarations page is part of the policy itself: named insured, policy number and term, limits, and — the part worth asking for — a schedule of every form and endorsement attached. That schedule is the cheapest way to see which numbers are genuinely on the policy. It gives you numbers rather than wording, so you still ask for the pages that matter.

What this reference does not settle

These are shapes, not wording. Carriers issue manuscript endorsements on their own paper under numbers you will not find here, and state amendatory forms rewrite parts of the standard ones. The page you were sent governs, every time.

Whether a given form satisfies your subcontract is a legal question about your contract in your state. This page cannot answer it, your sub cannot answer it, and no software can answer it — that one goes to your counsel and your own agent.

What Sealinn does here is narrow. It reads three yes/no flags off the certificate — additional insured, waiver of subrogation, and primary and non-contributory — plus the additional-insured name as plain text. Sealinn does not check form numbers. The ACORD 25 has no field for them, and anything an agent types into the description box is a claim about a document rather than the document. Sealinn captures that text and shows it to you; the only comparison it makes on a name is against the legal name you enter in settings, and only if you enter one. All three flags fail closed where you require them: a certificate Sealinn cannot read clearly enough produces a failure rather than a pass, and what Sealinn checks lists every field either way.

The endorsement pages stay documents you collect. You can add a document type of your own in Sealinn for them. Request it through the same portal the certificate arrives on, and Sealinn files the CG 20 37 beside the certificate that only claimed it.