What is a certificate of insurance?

A certificate of insurance is the single page a landlord, client or general contractor asks for before you get the keys or start the job, and in the US it’s usually a form called the ACORD 25, Certificate of Liability Insurance. It names your business, the insurers behind each policy, the policy numbers and dates, and the limits, laid out in a standard grid so the person reading it can see in a minute or two whether you carry what they asked for.

What it doesn’t do is change anything. The form says so in capital letters at the top, yet forgetting that line causes trouble on both sides of the deal, for the business sending the certificate and for the one filing it.

Who asks for a certificate, and why now?

Anyone who could get dragged into a claim because of your business wants proof you’re insured before that happens, and a certificate is the cheapest way for them to check. ACORD, the standards body that publishes the form, lists the common reasons in its own FAQ: a tenant whose building owner wants proof of liability insurance, a borrower whose lender wants proof of property insurance, someone renting equipment, and a business that needs evidence of workers’ comp to land a contract.

In practice the request shows up at a few predictable moments: when you sign a lease and the landlord wants proof before handing over keys, when a GC won’t let your crew on site until a certificate is on file, when a corporate client’s vendor portal won’t release your first payment until you upload one, or when a hotel wants one before it rents you a ballroom for a pop-up. The lease insurance requirements guide covers the lease version.

ACORD also says most certificates are issued at renewal, though. That’s the moment owners forget about, and it’s why a certificate you sent last year may already be stale in someone’s files.

Reading an ACORD 25 from top to bottom

ACORD doesn’t issue certificates itself. It licenses its forms to agents, brokers and insurers, who fill them in, and it publishes separate forms for other jobs, such as the ACORD 27 and 28 for evidence of property insurance, which go mainly to lenders and others with a financial interest in the property. The liability form is the one you’ll see on almost every lease and subcontract, so here’s how it reads.

The warning box

The capitalized paragraph at the top says the certificate is issued as a matter of information only, confers no rights on the certificate holder, doesn’t amend, extend or alter the coverage of the listed policies, and isn’t a contract between the insurer, the agent and the holder. A second box adds that if the holder is an additional insured, the policy must have additional insured provisions or be endorsed, and that a waiver of subrogation may need an endorsement too.

Read that twice. The form is telling you not to rely on the form.

Date, producer and insured

The date is the print date, and your policy periodPolicy periodThe policy period is the span of time between a policy’s start and end dates, usually 12 months, during which its coverage is in force.Read the definition is in the grid below, so a certificate dated last spring tells you what was true last spring. The producer is the agency or insurer that issued it, with a contact name, phone and email, and that’s who you call to confirm anything on the page. The insured is the business the policies cover, and it should match your legal name and any “doing business as” name exactly as they appear on your declarations pageDeclarations pageThe declarations page is the summary at the front of an insurance policy listing who’s insured, what’s covered, the limits, deductibles, premium and policy dates.Read the definition, because a client who signed a contract with your LLC will balk at a certificate made out to you personally.

Insurers affording coverage

Up to six insurers appear as Insurer A through Insurer F, each with a five-digit NAIC number, the code the National Association of Insurance Commissioners assigns to each insurance companyInsurance carrierAn insurance carrier is the company that issues your policy, takes on the financial risk it describes and pays covered claims.Read the definition. Every policy row in the grid carries one of those letters, so if your general liability and workers’ comp come from different companies you’ll see two of them, which is normal and nothing you need to explain to anyone.

The certificate and revision numbers are optional. Plenty of certificates leave them blank.

The coverage grid

This is the part people actually read, though the trouble usually starts in two small columns. Each row is a policy, and the columns break down like this:

Just above the grid, a paragraph certifies that the listed policies were issued for the period shown, says the coverage is subject to all of the policies’ terms, exclusions and conditions, and warns that limits may have been reduced by paid claims. ACORD’s December 2025 bulletin added a new sentence to that paragraph in the 2025/12 edition: the limits shown include amounts the certificate holder asked for and may not reflect any higher limits the policy carries. So a client who asked for $1 million (an illustrative figure) may see exactly $1 million, even if your policy has more.

The general liability row

This row carries the most detail. Boxes show whether the policy is written on a claims-madeClaims-made policyA claims-made policy covers claims first made against you during the policy period, for work or incidents that happened on or after the policy’s retroactive date.Read the definition or occurrenceOccurrence policyAn occurrence policy covers injury or damage that happens during the policy period, even if the claim is filed after the policy has ended.Read the definition basis, and whether the general aggregate applies per policy, per project or per location, which matters to contractors because a per-project aggregate gives each job its own pot. The limits column then lists:

• Each occurrence, the most paid for any one incident. See per-occurrence limitPer-occurrence limitA per-occurrence limit is the most a liability policy will pay for all claims arising from a single incident, however many people are hurt or claims are filed.Read the definition.
• Damage to rented premises, for damage you cause to space you rent, like a kitchen fire in your leased unit.
• Med exp, for small medical bills for an injured person regardless of fault. See medical payments coverageMedical payments coverageMedical payments coverage is a part of general liability that can pay small medical bills for people hurt at your business or by your operations, regardless of fault.Read the definition.
• Personal and advertising injury, for claims like libel or using someone’s photo in your ads.
• General aggregate, the most the policy pays in total during the policy period. See aggregate limitAggregate limitAn aggregate limit is the most a policy will pay for all covered claims combined during one policy period, no matter how many claims you have.Read the definition.
• Products and completed operations aggregate, the total for claims from finished work or products you sold. See products-completed operationsProducts-completed operationsProducts-completed operations is the part of general liability that covers injuries or damage caused by your finished work, or products you sold, after the job is done.Read the definition.

What the policy behind that row usually covers is on the general liability page.

Auto, umbrella and everything else

Rows for auto and umbrella liability stay blank if you don’t carry those separate kinds of insurance, and a policy without its own row, like professional liability or cyber insurance, gets typed into a spare row or the remarks box.

The workers’ comp row

This row covers workers’ compensation and employer’s liabilityEmployer’s liabilityEmployer’s liability insurance helps pay legal costs and damages when an employee, or their family, sues your business over a work-related injury or illness.Read the definition, with a “per statute” box that means the policy pays benefits as your state’s law sets them, and three employer’s liability limits after it for each accident, disease per employee and disease policy limit. Then there’s a Y/N box asking whether any proprietor, partner, executive officer or member is excluded, which the form marks as mandatory in New Hampshire. Clients read that box closely, since an owner who’s excluded and working on site generally isn’t covered by that policy, and who must be covered varies by state (the Department of Labor keeps a list of state workers’ compensation agencies).

Description of operations

This free-text box is where the producer adds the project address, a job or lease number, or a note that the holder is an additional insured under a particular endorsement. If there’s more to say than fits, an ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule gets stapled on. Whatever’s written here still only describes the policy.

Certificate holder, cancellation and signature

The certificate holder box, bottom left, holds the name and address of whoever the certificate is for, and it should match their legal name. The cancellation box says that if a policy is cancelled early, notice will be delivered in line with the policy’s provisions, which is a pointer back to the policy and not a promise to tell the holder anything. The authorized representative signs last.

The paper is not the policy

Here’s the part that costs owners money. People treat a certificate as if it were coverage. ACORD and the two state regulators below say otherwise, in nearly the same words.

ACORD’s FAQ puts it flatly: a certificate is not an insurance policy, and it doesn’t provide, endorse, amend, extend or alter the policy’s terms in any way, because only an endorsement, rider or amendment to the policy can change coverage. Nebraska’s Department of Insurance says certificates “do not and cannot amend, extend, or alter” coverage, and it warns producers that a certificate trying to do more than summarize the policy can violate state law and put their license at risk. New York goes a step further. Its Department of Financial Services explains that state law bars any person or government body from willfully requiring a certificate to include terms the policy doesn’t, and bars a certificate from altering the coverage it describes.

So what does that mean for you? It cuts in three directions, and each one shows up in real leases and subcontracts.

When you send a certificate, it only helps if the policy matches the contract. Say a lease requires the landlord to be an additional insured. Your agent can check the ADDL INSD box and type the landlord’s name into the remarks, but if no endorsement on your policy actually covers the landlord, the landlord has a piece of paper and no coverage, and you may have breached the lease without knowing it. ACORD’s FAQ also notes that referring to a contract on a certificate doesn’t provide coverage, so a line like “coverage per lease section 12” does nothing on its own.

Notice of cancellation is weaker than people think. Leases love a clause saying your insurer must give the landlord 30 days’ notice before cancelling. ACORD explains that a typical liability policy obliges the insurer to notify only the first named insured, which is you, unless the policy is endorsed to notify someone else, and Nebraska tells producers they may not state on a certificate that a holder has a right to notice the policy doesn’t give. If your lease asks for insurer notice, either get the endorsement or ask to change the clause so that you, instead of the insurer, promise to tell the landlord.

A certificate is a snapshot. It’s accurate on the day it’s printed, but only then. A policy can be cancelled for nonpayment the following week, and the certificate in the client’s file won’t change, which is why careful GCs call the producer or ask for fresh certificates instead of trusting the one from last year.

There’s one more wrinkle, and it surprises people on the receiving end. Under the 2025/12 edition of the ACORD 25, the limits printed may be only the limits the holder asked for, while certificates printed on the older 2016/03 edition don’t carry that sentence. That’s fine for proving you meet a requirement. It’s useless for figuring out how much coverage a sub actually carries, so don’t read a certificate as a full picture of anyone’s insurance.

Certificate holder vs. additional insured

These two get mixed up constantly. A certificate holderCertificate holderA certificate holder is the person or company that receives a certificate of insurance as proof of your coverage, without gaining any coverage under your policy.Read the definition is just the party the certificate is addressed to, and the form’s own header says being the holder gives them no rights at all. An additional insuredAdditional insuredAn additional insured is a person or company, such as a landlord or client, added to your liability policy so it can protect them from claims tied to your work.Read the definition has been added to your policy, usually by an endorsementEndorsementAn endorsement is a written change to an insurance policy that adds, removes or modifies coverage, such as adding an additional insured or a new location.Read the definition, so the policy can protect them too for certain claims that come out of your work or your premises, subject to the endorsement’s terms.

Landlords and clients often want both, but neither the holder box nor a checked ADDL INSD column delivers the second one, because only the policy can. Additional insured vs. certificate holder has the full comparison, including blanket and scheduled endorsements, and the related waiver of subrogationWaiver of subrogationA waiver of subrogation is an agreement, usually added to your policy by endorsement, that stops your insurer from recovering claim payments from a specific client, landlord or contractor.Read the definition works the same way.

Checking a certificate someone hands you

If you hire subcontractors, rent chairs to stylists or let vendors work in your space, you’ll be on this side of the form more than you think. A sub’s uninsured injury or mistake can land on you, and your own insurer may ask to see your subs’ certificates at a premium auditPremium auditA premium audit is the insurer’s review of your actual payroll, sales or other figures after a policy ends, used to replace estimates and set your final premium.Read the definition. Here’s the order to check things in:

1. The insured’s name. It should match the business on your contract.
2. The dates. The policy period should cover the whole job or rental term, and you should note the expiration date.
3. The lines. Every coverage your contract requires needs its own row, including workers’ comp and anything like professional liability.
4. The limits. Compare each occurrence, aggregate and completed operations limits with what you required.
5. The owner exclusion box. If it says yes and the owner will be doing the work, ask how they’re covered.
6. The ADDL INSD and SUBR WVD columns, then the endorsements. The columns only indicate. If the contract requires either one, ask for the endorsements themselves.
7. The producer. Call to confirm the policy is in force, using contact details you find on your own if anything about the document looks off.

New York’s state contracting guidelines describe the habit that keeps this from falling apart: diary each policy 30 days before it expires, and if no renewal proof has arrived by then, ask for a new certificate before the old coverage ends. Collecting subcontractor certificates shows how to run it.

Getting your certificate from Corgi

With Corgi, your certificate of insurance is available the day you buy, and you can download it or send it straight to a landlord or client from your account.

The mistake to avoid is buying first and reading the contract second. Pull out the insurance section of your lease or contract before you get a quote, because it tells you the limits, the lines and any additional insured, primary and noncontributoryPrimary and noncontributoryPrimary and noncontributory is policy wording that makes your insurance pay first for a covered claim, without asking the additional insured’s own insurance to share the cost.Read the definition or waiver wording you’ll need, and have the holder’s exact legal name and address ready.

If the contract asks for something you’re not sure your policy includes, ask before you sign. Questions are answered by underwriters, not a broker, and if a client needs a higher limit than you carry, Corgi can raise limits the same day. How to read insurance requirements in a client contract goes through a full insurance exhibit line by line.