ACORD 37

What the ACORD 37 is for

The ACORD 37 supports a reinstatement. Where a policy has cancelled for non-payment or lapsed and the client wants it back in force, the carrier needs the insured to state that nothing happened during the gap. This form is that statement.

It is a serious document rather than a formality. The insured is signing an affirmation the carrier will rely on, and a claim later discovered to have occurred inside the stated period puts the reinstatement, and the insured's credibility, in question.

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.

Policy identification

Carrier, policy number, named insured and the line of business being reinstated.

Period covered by the statement

The exact dates of the lapse the statement speaks to.

Statement

The insured's affirmation that no loss, accident or circumstance likely to give rise to a claim occurred in that period.

Signature

Signed by the insured, with the producer's details recorded.

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 stated period matches the actual lapse exactly, from the cancellation date to the proposed reinstatement date.
• The insured genuinely understands what is being affirmed, and has actually checked with anyone who would know about an incident.
• The reinstatement terms from the carrier are confirmed in writing before the client is told the policy is back on.
• The file records the gap itself, since coverage during a lapse does not come back even after a reinstatement.
• Where the lapse followed non-payment, the payment position is resolved before the form goes in.

What the ACORD 37 does not do

• It does not reinstate the policy. The carrier does, and only if it accepts the statement.
• It does not restore coverage for the lapse period. A loss inside the gap remains uninsured.

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.

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