A certificate holder is the person or company whose name sits in the bottom-left box of your certificate of insurance, and all they get is information: proof that on the day the certificate was printed, you had the policies, limits and dates shown. An additional insured is someone your policy has been changed to cover, usually through an endorsement, so they can turn to your insurer if they’re sued over something your business did.
Landlords and clients usually ask for both in the same sentence, and it’s easy to hand over only the first one. Typing a name into the holder box takes an agent ten seconds. Making that same party an additional insured takes a change to the policy, and that’s the part a lease or subcontract is really asking for.
Key takeaways
- A certificate holder receives proof of your insurance but gets no coverage under your policy.
- An additional insured is added to your policy, usually by endorsement, and can be covered for certain claims that arise from your work or premises.
- Additional insured coverage is usually limited to claims caused at least in part by you, and it may reach only ongoing work, only completed work, or both.
- Every additional insured shares your limits, so adding a landlord or client doesn’t give anyone a second pot of money.
- A checked box or a sentence on the certificate doesn’t make anyone an additional insured, because only the policy and its endorsements can do that.
What a certificate holder gets
Being the certificate holder gets a landlord or client three things. They have a record of your insurer, policy numbers, dates and limits as of the day the certificate was issued, they have the producer’s phone number and email so they can confirm the coverage is still in force, and they have a document they can file to show their own lender, auditor or insurer that the people working in their building carry insurance.
That’s the whole list. The standard ACORD 25 says in its header that the certificate confers no rights on the holder, so if a customer slips in your shop and sues you and your landlord together, a landlord who’s only a holder has no claim on your policy and falls back on their own insurance and whatever indemnity promise is in the lease.
Why additional insured status is the one that matters
An additional insured is a person or organization that isn’t automatically insured under your policy but has been given insured status, usually by an endorsement you ask for. New York’s state contracting guidelines describe the effect in plain terms: an additional insured on a contractor’s policy can make a claim to the contractor’s insurer to pay for damages and legal fees, rather than relying on its own insurance. That’s a real transfer of risk from their insurer to yours. It’s why they ask.
But the protection has edges, and they’re easy to miss.
It usually reaches only claims you had a hand in. The standard contractor wording quoted in New York’s guidelines covers the additional insured only for injury or damage caused, in whole or in part, by your acts or omissions, or by people acting for you, in work you do for them. Endorsements written for landlords use their own wording, often tied to the part of the building you lease, so read the one on your policy. Either way, a landlord who’s an additional insured on your café’s general liability can look to your policy when a customer trips over your sandwich board, and generally can’t use it when the roof they never fixed leaks onto a customer two units down.
It shares your limits. New York’s guidelines note that a liability policy’s limits don’t increase with the number of people insured under it. If your policy carries $1 million per occurrence (an illustrative figure) and a claim names both you and your landlord, the defense and any payout for both of you come out of that same $1 million, along with the aggregate that has to last the rest of the year. Add three landlords and two GCs over a busy year and you’re sharing one set of limits with all of them. There’s a second cap, too: the 2013 edition of ISO’s CG 20 10, reproduced in the same guidelines, limits what the additional insured gets to the lesser of the amount the contract requires and the limit on your policy. That’s a good reason to look at your limits whenever a new contract adds a new name, and Corgi can raise limits the same day if a client’s requirement calls for it.
It isn’t the same as being named on the policy. New York’s guidelines point out that an additional insured endorsement doesn’t add anyone to the list of named insureds. The additional insured gets coverage similar to yours for the claims the endorsement describes, and nothing broader, so they can’t use your policy for their own unrelated business.
Blanket or scheduled: which do you have?
Fair question, and it’s worth checking before you promise anyone anything, because there are two common ways an additional insured gets added.
A scheduled endorsement lists each additional insured by name in a schedule on the endorsement, the way ISO’s CG 20 10 form does. It’s precise. But every new landlord or client means another policy change, and if the contract names three related companies, all three have to be on the schedule.
A blanket endorsement, which New York’s guidelines also call an automatic additional insured endorsement, gives insured status to any person or organization you’re required by contract to add. That’s the better fit for most businesses that sign more than a couple of contracts a year, though it comes with conditions. Blanket forms apply only when a written contract requires the coverage, and New York notes that some apply only to certain types of contracts or entities. So a handshake job, or a contract signed after the incident, may not trigger it at all.
You can check which one you have by reading your endorsements, but the faster route is to ask whoever answers your policy questions (with Corgi, that’s an underwriter, not a broker). And when a blanket endorsement is in place, expect the certificate to say something like “blanket additional insured applies where required by written contract” instead of naming the holder.
Ongoing work vs. completed work
Say a plumbing sub finishes a restaurant build-out in March. In September, a joint behind a wall lets go and floods the dining room, and the restaurant owner sues the general contractor, who turns to the sub’s policy as an additional insured. Whether that works depends on a detail that’s easy to miss in an endorsement schedule.
Some additional insured endorsements cover only your ongoing operations, meaning injury or damage that happens while you’re still doing the work. Others cover completed operations, meaning claims that come from your finished work after you’ve left (see products-completed operations). New York’s guidelines explain that later revisions of the CG 20 10 form dropped coverage for the completed operations phase, and they recommend pairing an ongoing-work form such as the CG 20 10 or CG 20 38 with a completed-operations form such as the CG 20 37. If the sub in that example had only the first kind, the September leak may never reach the GC through the sub’s policy, and the GC will look to the indemnity clause in the subcontract instead.
That’s why a subcontract that says “additional insured for ongoing and completed operations” is asking for two things, and why the certificate alone won’t tell you whether you’ve delivered both.
Who asks for which
| Situation | Usually asks for | Often also asks for |
|---|---|---|
| Homeowner hiring a contractor for a small job | Certificate holder | Sometimes additional insured |
| Landlord signing a retail, restaurant or office lease | Certificate holder and additional insured | Waiver of subrogation |
| General contractor hiring a subcontractor | Additional insured for ongoing and completed operations | Primary and noncontributory, waiver of subrogation |
| Corporate client onboarding a vendor | Certificate holder, often additional insured | Primary and noncontributory, professional liability |
| Venue hosting your pop-up or event | Additional insured for the event dates | Certificate by a deadline |
These are patterns, though, and the lease or contract is what you’ll be held to, so read its insurance section first. Two phrases tend to travel with additional insured requests, and they’re worth knowing cold. Primary and noncontributory means your policy pays first for a covered claim against the additional insured and their own insurance doesn’t chip in, and New York’s model language requires a contractor’s coverage to apply on a primary basis. A waiver of subrogation stops your insurer from trying to recover what it paid from the other party, and what is a waiver of subrogation? explains it.
One request to push back on: additional insured status on professional liability. New York’s guidelines say additional insureds can’t be added to a professional liability or errors and omissions policy, because the client doesn’t perform the professional services that policy is built to cover, so if a client’s MSA asks for it, ask them to strike that line.
What to do when the request lands
When an email asks you to “add us as additional insured and send a COI,” work through it in this order:
- Get the exact requirement. Copy the insurance section of the lease or contract and mark every name, policy, limit, and words like “primary,” “noncontributory,” “waiver” and “completed operations.”
- Get every legal name right. Leases often name the owner, the property manager and the lender, and each one has to fall under the endorsement.
- Check your endorsements. Look for a blanket additional insured form and read what triggers it.
- Ask before you sign. If the requirement goes past what your policy includes, ask whether it can be added and whether it changes your price.
- Send the certificate, and the endorsement if asked. GCs and corporate clients may ask for the endorsement page itself, since the certificate only indicates.
With Corgi, your certificate is available the day you buy, and you can send it to a landlord or client straight from your account.
See what general liability costs for your business
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Frequently asked questions
Does being a certificate holder give any coverage?
No, it doesn’t. A certificate holder only receives the certificate as proof of your insurance, and the standard form says it confers no rights on the holder, so to be covered under your policy a party needs to be an additional insured through an endorsement or another policy provision.
Does adding an additional insured cost more?
It can. Whether it changes your price depends on the insurer, the kind of endorsement and the work you do, so ask before you sign a contract that requires one and check your quote for the price of the coverage you actually choose.
Can I be an additional insured on someone else’s policy?
Yes, and if you hire subcontractors you should usually ask for it, by requiring them to add you to their general liability and sending you both their certificate and a copy of the endorsement before they start. Check that the endorsement covers the kind of work they’ll do for you, including completed work if that matters.
Can a certificate name someone as an additional insured if the policy doesn’t?
It shouldn’t. A certificate summarizes the policy and can’t add coverage to it, so if no endorsement on the policy covers the party, writing their name in the description box doesn’t make them an additional insured, however official the page looks.
