ACORD 137

What the ACORD 137 is for

The ACORD 137 carries the commercial auto detail behind a submission: which coverages are requested at which limits, and the schedules of vehicles and drivers behind them. ACORD publishes state-specific variants of this form, so the version your management system produces may differ by state.

The part of this form that decides claims is the coverage symbol selection. Symbols determine which autos a coverage applies to, and a symbol that covers only owned autos leaves hired and non-owned exposure uninsured however high the limit is.

What it collects

Described in our own words, block by block. This is a summary of the information the form gathers, not a reproduction of the form itself.

Coverages and limits

Liability, uninsured and underinsured motorists, medical payments or personal injury protection, comprehensive and collision, each with its limit and deductible.

Covered auto symbols

The symbol selected against each coverage, which defines the class of autos that coverage reaches.

Vehicle schedule

Year, make, model, vehicle identification number, cost new, use, radius and garaging location for each unit.

Driver schedule

Named drivers with licence details, date of birth and years of experience.

Hired and non-owned

Whether coverage is requested for autos the insured hires or for employees' own vehicles used on company business.

Additional interests

Lienholders and lessors whose interest must be recorded against a specific unit.

Check before it leaves the agency

The defects that cause trouble later are nearly always the same handful. Run these before the form goes out.

• Symbols are requested deliberately for each coverage rather than accepted as a default, since this is what decides whether a coverage reaches hired, non-owned or newly acquired autos.
• Hired and non-owned coverage is addressed explicitly for any account whose employees drive their own cars on company business.
• Every unit's vehicle identification number is correct, because an incorrect one means the unit is not scheduled.
• Garaging locations match where the vehicles actually sit overnight, which drives the rate and which underwriters do verify.
• The driver schedule is current, with new drivers added and leavers removed.
• Lienholder and lessee interests are recorded per unit, not for the policy generally.

What the ACORD 137 does not do

• It does not cover an auto the insured has not scheduled, unless the symbol selected reaches it.
• It does not stand alone; it attaches to an ACORD 125.

Which edition?

ACORD revises its forms, and the edition date is printed in the bottom-left corner beside the form number. This page deliberately does not name an edition, because a hard-coded one goes stale and a stale edition on a reference page is worse than none. Produce the form from your own management system, which will give you the current version, and read the corner if a carrier or a contract has asked for a specific one.

At renewal

BindCheck reads a bound renewal against the prior policy and reports every form, limit, deductible and endorsement that changed, with each finding cited to the page it came from. That matters for this form because what you put on an ACORD is only correct for as long as the policy behind it is unchanged: a certificate, an evidence form or a schedule of interests prepared from last term's facts is a defect nobody sees until the party relying on it needs it.

Related forms

• Commercial auto renewal checking