Certificates of insurance for subcontractors

The practical answer

A subcontractor's certificate of insurance is the document that decides whether their claim becomes your claim. Every year a general contractor collects hundreds of them, and the number that would actually hold up under a claim is smaller than most people assume.

This is written for the side collecting the certificate. What to require, what the certificate proves, what it cannot prove, and the specific checks that separate a compliant sub from one who merely has paperwork.

What to require, by trade risk

A single requirement applied to every sub is either too heavy for the painter or too light for the steel erector. Most working programs run a baseline and then tier up:

• Commercial general liability on an occurrence basis, with an each-occurrence limit and a general aggregate. One million and two million is the common baseline; roofing, steel, excavation, demolition and anything at height usually go higher or carry a required umbrella.
• Additional insured status for ongoing operations and completed operations, by endorsement, for the general contractor and the owner.
• Primary and non-contributory wording, by endorsement.
• Waiver of subrogation on general liability and on workers compensation where the subcontract has mutual waivers.
• Workers compensation at statutory limits, plus employers liability limits stated in the subcontract.
• Commercial auto including hired and non-owned, for any sub whose people drive to site, which is all of them.
• Umbrella or excess following form over general liability, auto and employers liability, with the following-form position confirmed rather than assumed.
• Trade-specific additions where they apply: pollution liability for abatement and environmental work, professional liability for design-build scopes, riggers liability for crane work, installation floater for high-value materials.

What the certificate proves, and what it does not

The ACORD 25 says on its face that it is issued as a matter of information only, confers no rights on the certificate holder, and does not amend the policy. Read literally, that sentence describes the limits of the whole exercise.

• It proves a policy existed when the certificate was typed. It does not prove the policy is in force today.
• The ADDL INSD column asserts additional insured status. It does not name the form, the edition, or the party. Only the endorsement does.
• The SUBR WVD column asserts a waiver. Same problem.
• A sentence about primary and non-contributory coverage in the description box is free text with no effect on the policy.
• The general aggregate shown is annual and shared across every job the sub is working. It may be largely consumed already.
• Exclusions are invisible. Residential exclusions, height limitations, subcontractor warranties and labor exclusions never appear on the certificate face.

The checks that actually catch problems

• Named insured matches the entity on the subcontract. A certificate for the owner's other LLC is a common and expensive miss.
• Policy dates cover the whole scope of work, and the expiry is diarized with the chase going to the producing agency, not to the sub.
• Endorsement pages are attached, and the form numbers are read: CG 20 10 for ongoing operations, CG 20 37 for completed operations, CG 20 01 for primary and non-contributory, CG 24 04 for the general liability waiver.
• Scheduled endorsements name your exact legal entity. Blanket endorsements are backed by a signed subcontract dated before work started.
• Workers compensation covers the states where the work happens, and the officer exclusion box is read. A two-person LLC with both owners excluded has a comp policy that covers nobody on your site.
• Employers liability limits meet the subcontract, not just the statutory line.
• Umbrella schedule lists the correct underlying policies. An umbrella sitting over an unrelated schedule adds nothing.
• The certificate came from the agency, not forwarded as an editable file by the sub. A certificate the sub produced themselves is a red flag worth a phone call to the agency named on it.

Where subcontractor COI programs break

Almost never at the point of first review. They break at renewal, when the sub is already on site, the policy lapses on a Friday, and nobody notices until the next audit. They break when a subcontract is amended and the requirement changes but the file does not. They break when the person who understood endorsements leaves and the next reviewer checks dates only.

The durable fix is to make the requirement a record rather than a habit: written per trade, stored against the sub, re-checked automatically at every renewal, with the endorsement evidence attached to the finding rather than living in an inbox.

Collecting them without becoming the bottleneck

Subs do not withhold certificates out of malice. The request goes to a project manager, who forwards it to an office manager, who emails an agency that needs the exact wording and the exact entity names before it can issue anything. Every hop loses a day.

Sending the requirement in a form the agency can act on removes most of that: the exact legal names to be added, the endorsement forms required, the project reference, and a link the agency can upload to directly. Certificates arrive faster when the person who can actually issue them is the person you asked.