ACORD 25

What the ACORD 25 is for

The ACORD 25 is the single most-issued document in a commercial agency. A client signs a contract, the other party asks for proof of insurance, and the agency issues a certificate summarising the policies in force. It is a snapshot of coverage as of the date it is issued, prepared by the producer, not by the carrier.

Because it is a summary, the certificate is also the most misunderstood document in the file. The holder often treats it as a contract; it is not one. The certificate reports what the policy says on the day it was printed, and it confers no rights on the holder beyond that report.

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.

Producer

The agency issuing the certificate, with the contact who can answer questions about it.

Insured

The named insured exactly as it appears on the policy declarations. A trading name that does not match the policy is the most common defect on an issued certificate.

Insurers affording coverage

Each carrier is given a letter, with its NAIC number, so every coverage line below can point at the carrier that writes it.

Coverage rows

One row per line: general liability, automobile liability, umbrella or excess, and workers compensation and employers liability, each with its policy number, effective and expiration dates, and limits.

Additional insured and subrogation columns

Two tick columns on each coverage row indicate whether an additional insured endorsement and a waiver of subrogation apply. They record what the policy does; they do not create either.

Description of operations

The free-text block where the specific job, contract, project or wording the holder asked for is described.

Certificate holder

The party being given the certificate, with the address the contract specifies.

Cancellation and authorised representative

The notice statement, and the signature of the person at the agency authorised to issue it.

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.

• The named insured matches the declarations page character for character, including entity type. A certificate issued for the trading name of a company insured under a holding company name is a defect that surfaces at claim time.
• Every policy number and every effective and expiration date is read from the current policy, not carried over from the prior term.
• The limits shown match the declarations, including any aggregate that applies per project or per location rather than one shared aggregate.
• If the additional insured or waiver column is ticked, the endorsement that produces it is actually attached to the policy. Confirm the endorsement, not the client's expectation.
• The description of operations names the specific contract or project when the contract requires it, and says nothing that broadens what the policy actually grants.
• The certificate holder name and address match the ones the contract specifies, since a mismatch is the usual reason a certificate is rejected and reissued.

What the ACORD 25 does not do

• It does not amend, extend or alter the policy. Wording typed into the description block cannot grant coverage the policy does not contain.
• It does not make the holder an additional insured. Only an endorsement on the policy does that, and the certificate only reports it.
• It does not guarantee notice of cancellation. The notice provisions belong to the policy and to state law, not to the certificate.
• It is not evidence of property insurance for a lender. That is the ACORD 27 or ACORD 28.

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

• CG 20 10, the ongoing-operations additional insured endorsement
• CG 20 37, the completed-operations additional insured endorsement