What is a CG 20 10 endorsement?

The practical answer

CG 20 10 is the ISO form titled 'Additional Insured: Owners, Lessees or Contractors: Scheduled Person or Organization'. It is the form most contracts have in mind when they require additional insured status, and it is the most frequently misread document in commercial insurance.

It covers ongoing operations. While the contractor is working, liability arising from that work reaches their policy on your behalf. When the work is complete, the grant generally stops, and a second form is needed to carry protection past that point.

What the form grants, and to whom

The endorsement adds the person or organization shown in its schedule as an additional insured on the contractor's commercial general liability policy, for liability connected to the contractor's ongoing operations performed for that party.

Because it is a scheduled form, the entity in the schedule matters. A certificate naming your management company while the endorsement schedules the property owner leaves the wrong party protected. Legal entity names, not trading names, are what the schedule needs to carry.

The edition date is the coverage

Contracts that specify only 'CG 20 10' accept whatever edition the carrier issues, and the editions are materially different:

• 11 85: used 'arising out of your work', broad enough that it was generally read to include completed operations. Still named in older contract templates, rarely available today.
• 10 01: restricts the grant to ongoing operations. Completed operations moves to CG 20 37.
• 07 04: narrows the trigger to damage 'caused, in whole or in part, by' the named insured's acts or omissions. The additional insured's own sole negligence is no longer covered.
• 04 13: limits coverage to what the written contract requires and no broader than the jurisdiction allows.

Where CG 20 10 stops

Two gaps account for most disputes. The first is timing: once the work is complete, an ongoing-operations endorsement is generally finished, and the claim that arrives a year later needs CG 20 37 instead.

The second is priority. Additional insured status alone does not make the contractor's policy pay first. Primary and non-contributory wording is a separate provision, and without it a carrier can argue your own policy contributes on equal footing.

How to verify CG 20 10 on a certificate

• Read the endorsement pages rather than the ADDL INSD checkbox on the ACORD 25.
• Confirm the form number and record the edition date next to it.
• Match the policy number and effective dates to the certificate.
• Check that the schedule names your correct legal entity, or that blanket wording plainly reaches you.
• Ask whether completed operations are required by your contract, and if so require CG 20 37 as well.
• Verify primary and non-contributory separately.

Scheduled or blanket

A scheduled CG 20 10 names you directly, which makes verification straightforward and ties the evidence to one project. A blanket form such as CG 20 33 or CG 20 38 grants status automatically wherever a written contract requires it, which is easier for the contractor to administer but shifts the verification burden onto the contract wording and the date it was signed.

Neither is inherently better. What matters is whether the mechanism actually delivers the protection your agreement demands, and whether you can produce the evidence when a claim arrives.