To get a certificate of insurance, contact your insurance agent, broker, or carrier and ask for one; in most cases you’ll have the ACORD 25 form in hand the same business day at no charge beyond your existing premium. If your carrier offers a policyholder portal, you can often generate a standard certificate yourself in minutes. Carriers including Travelers and Hiscox provide instant digital certificate access through online dashboards, and when no self-service option exists, a phone call or email to your agent typically produces the document within hours.
The certificate itself is a one-page snapshot of your active coverage, built on a standardized form used across the United States. It lists the details a landlord, general contractor, or business partner needs to confirm coverage: policy types, limits, effective dates, and any special endorsements. Getting one is quick. Getting one that actually satisfies the contract in front of you takes a little more attention.
What to Have Ready Before You Call
The request goes faster, and the certificate comes back correct the first time, when you give your agent everything at once. Gather the following before you make contact:
- Certificate holder name and address. This is the party requesting the COI and goes in the certificate holder box at the bottom of the form.
- Any required endorsements. If the contract requires additional insured status, a waiver of subrogation, or primary-and-noncontributory language, tell your agent up front. These endorsements must be added to the actual policy, not just mentioned on the certificate.
- Project or job details. For construction work or location-specific agreements, the requesting party may want a project address or contract number in the description field.
- Deadline. If a contract requires proof of insurance before work begins, communicate that date clearly.
The certificate itself is free. Adding endorsements such as additional insured status sometimes triggers a small fee or a premium adjustment, depending on your carrier and the scope of coverage being extended. Ask your agent about any added cost before committing, especially if a contract requires several endorsements.
What Your Certificate Will Show
Nearly every certificate of insurance issued in the United States follows the ACORD 25 format, so once you’ve read one you can read them all. At the top: the producer’s information (your agent or broker), the insured’s name and address, and an identification number for the certificate itself. Below that sits the coverage grid, where most of the useful information lives. Each row represents a different type of coverage.
Commercial general liability covers bodily injury and property damage claims arising from your business operations. The row shows per-occurrence limits, a general aggregate, and a products/completed operations aggregate. Standard policies commonly carry $1 million per occurrence and a $2 million aggregate, though contractual requirements may push those higher.
Automobile liability covers vehicles used in business. The form specifies whether the policy applies to all owned autos, hired autos, non-owned autos, or scheduled vehicles, with combined single limits or split limits for bodily injury and property damage.
Umbrella or excess liability sits above the primary policies and responds once those limits are exhausted. The form shows per-occurrence and aggregate limits for this layer and notes whether the policy is occurrence-based or claims-made.
Workers’ compensation and employers’ liability shows statutory workers’ comp limits and separate employers’ liability limits per accident, per employee for disease, and disease policy limit.
Each row includes two small checkboxes: “ADDL INSD” (additional insured) and “SUBR WVD” (subrogation waived). A “Y” in either box tells the certificate holder that the underlying policy includes those endorsements. The grid also shows policy numbers and exact effective and expiration dates, so anyone reading the form can confirm coverage is active during the period that matters.
Below the grid is a free-text field labeled “Description of Operations / Locations / Vehicles.” This is where your agent notes project-specific details, job site addresses, or special contractual language.
Endorsements You May Need to Ask For Separately
A bare COI confirms a policy exists. Endorsements are what actually extend or modify coverage in ways that protect the certificate holder. Three come up in nearly every commercial contract. If your contract mentions them, raise them with your agent when you request the certificate, because they have to sit on the underlying policy for the certificate’s checkboxes to mean anything.
Additional Insured
When someone is listed as an additional insured on your policy, they can make a claim under that policy if your work causes them to get sued. A general contractor who hires a subcontractor, for example, wants additional insured status on the sub’s general liability policy so that if the sub’s work injures someone and the GC gets pulled into the lawsuit, the sub’s policy responds first. The certificate will show a “Y” in the ADDL INSD column, and the underlying policy should contain an endorsement naming the certificate holder or using blanket additional insured language.
Being listed as a certificate holder is not the same as being an additional insured. A certificate holder simply receives a copy of the COI. An additional insured receives actual coverage rights. If your contract requires additional insured status, confirm with your agent that the policy endorsement itself exists.
Waiver of Subrogation
Subrogation is an insurer’s right to recover money from whoever caused a loss after the insurer has paid a claim. A waiver of subrogation gives up that right. If your subcontractor’s employee gets hurt on a job and the sub’s workers’ comp carrier pays the claim, the carrier normally could turn around and sue you to recover what it paid. A waiver of subrogation prevents that suit.
This endorsement is standard in construction contracts, lease agreements, and many service contracts. On the ACORD 25 it appears as a “Y” in the SUBR WVD column. Like additional insured status, the waiver must exist in the policy as a formal endorsement, not just as a checkbox on the certificate.
Primary and Noncontributory
When multiple policies could potentially cover the same claim, the primary-and-noncontributory endorsement sets the order. A policy with this endorsement pays first and doesn’t ask other available policies to chip in until its own limits are exhausted. General contractors routinely require this from subcontractors so the sub’s policy takes the lead on any claim arising from the sub’s work.
The endorsement typically requires two conditions: the additional insured must also be a named insured under their own separate policy, and the policyholder must have agreed in writing (usually in the subcontract) that their insurance would be primary and noncontributory. If those conditions aren’t met, the endorsement doesn’t activate, even if the COI references it.
What the Certificate Cannot Do
The most important thing to understand about a certificate of insurance is printed in bold at the top of every ACORD 25: “This certificate is issued as a matter of information only and confers no rights upon the certificate holder. This certificate does not affirmatively or negatively amend, extend or alter the coverage afforded by the policies below.”
That disclaimer isn’t boilerplate. Courts have consistently enforced it. A COI is a summary, not a contract. If the certificate says one thing and the policy says something else, the policy wins. When a claim occurs, the carrier looks at the actual endorsements attached to the policy to decide who is covered and how, not at whatever the certificate might state.
That creates a real risk on your side of the transaction: an agent could issue a COI listing your customer as an additional insured, but if the endorsement was never actually added to the policy, they have no coverage. That’s why sophisticated certificate holders sometimes ask for copies of the endorsement pages themselves, and why you want your agent to confirm the endorsements are on the policy before the certificate goes out.
A few other limits worth knowing before you hand a COI over:
- A COI doesn’t list exclusions. The form has no room for the dozens of exclusions in a typical commercial policy, so pollution, professional services, and employment practices carve-outs never appear.
- A COI doesn’t update automatically. If you change carriers, reduce limits, or drop a coverage line mid-term, the certificate you sent months ago still shows the old information until someone issues a replacement.
- A COI can’t create obligations the policy doesn’t contain. Language written into the description field about, say, 30 days’ cancellation notice doesn’t bind the insurer unless the policy itself carries a matching endorsement. The standard ACORD 25 cancellation language says only that notice will be delivered “in accordance with the policy provisions.”
Keeping Coverage Current After the First Certificate
Policies renew, lapse, and change, so the certificate you issue today has a shelf life. If your contract requires you to maintain coverage for the life of a project, expect the certificate holder to ask for a fresh COI at renewal, and plan for that request the same way you planned for the first one. A calendar reminder 30 days before your policy’s expiration date is usually enough to prompt an updated certificate without a coverage gap on the other side.
Digitally issued COIs are legally valid under the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, which allows electronic records to satisfy any legal requirement for written documentation as long as the recipient has consented to electronic delivery. Most carriers and agents now default to email or portal delivery, and those digital copies are as enforceable as a printed original.
Retention matters on your end too. Certificates showing occurrence-based policies are worth keeping permanently, because a claim can surface years after the policy period ends and you may need to prove coverage existed at the time of the incident. Certificates for claims-made policies should be kept for at least six years after the tail period expires. Workers’ compensation certificates likewise deserve permanent retention, since occupational disease claims can emerge decades later.