General liability renewal review: what actually changed vs. the prior policy

Start with the forms schedule, not the declarations page

The declarations page tells you the limits and the premium. The forms and endorsements schedule — usually a dense list of CG form numbers with edition dates, often pages deep into the renewal packet — tells you what the policy actually does. A proper GL renewal review compares that schedule against the expiring policy's schedule first, because the changes that hurt at claim time are additions, deletions and edition-date shifts among the forms, not the headline limit.

Build a two-column list: every form number and edition date on the prior policy, every form number and edition date on the renewal. Then classify each line into one of five buckets — added, dropped, edition-changed, limit/deductible-changed, or manuscript (carrier-drafted, non-standard). A form that appears on both schedules but with a newer edition date is not a non-event; ISO edition changes can narrow the grant of coverage or shift definitions, so an edition bump is a change to investigate, not to wave through.

• CG 00 01 — the core commercial general liability coverage form; note the edition date on both terms, since the coverage grant and key definitions can move between editions.
• CG 21 series exclusions — a new exclusion on the renewal (communicable disease, abuse and molestation, professional services, cyber) is a coverage cut even when limits are unchanged.
• CG 25 series aggregate endorsements — a designated-location or per-project general aggregate (CG 25 03 / CG 25 04) present last term but absent this term collapses the insured's aggregate protection back to a single shared limit.
• Any form on the prior schedule with no counterpart on the renewal schedule — the silent drop is the single most common, most litigated GL renewal miss.

The additional-insured endorsements are where renewals fail quietly

Additional-insured status is the part of a GL policy your commercial insureds are contractually obligated to maintain, and it is the part most likely to change without anyone saying so. The two forms that matter most operate as a pair: CG 20 10 grants additional-insured status for the named party's liability arising out of the insured's ongoing operations, and CG 20 37 extends that status to completed operations. A renewal that keeps CG 20 10 but drops CG 20 37 has silently ended completed-operations protection for every certificate holder relying on it — a gap that surfaces only when a completed-work claim lands, long after the certificate went out.

Edition dates on these endorsements are not cosmetic either. The additional-insured CG 20 10 form has meaningfully different coverage scope across its editions — earlier editions read more broadly, and post-2004 editions narrowed completed-operations treatment, which is precisely why CG 20 37 became the separate completed-ops endorsement. A GL renewal review has to compare not just whether the additional-insured forms carried forward, but which edition carried forward, and whether primary-and-noncontributory and waiver-of-subrogation language rode along with them.

• CG 20 10 — additional insured, ongoing operations; confirm it carried forward and check the edition date against the prior term.
• CG 20 37 — additional insured, completed operations; a renewal that drops this while keeping CG 20 10 ends completed-ops coverage silently.
• CG 20 01 — primary and noncontributory language; present last term, missing this term is a change your insured's contracts may prohibit.
• Waiver-of-subrogation endorsements — dropped waivers break contractual obligations to project owners and general contractors.

Then reconcile the limits, aggregates and deductibles line by line

Once the forms schedule is diffed, compare the declarations numbers with the same discipline. It is not enough to confirm the each-occurrence limit matches; the general aggregate, the products-and-completed-operations aggregate, personal and advertising injury, medical payments, and any endorsed sublimit each move independently. A renewal that holds the occurrence limit steady but folds a previously separate per-project aggregate into a single general aggregate has reduced coverage without touching the number the insured looks at.

Watch the quiet mechanical shifts: a deductible or self-insured retention that ticked up, an aggregate that changed from applying per project to applying per policy, or a sublimit endorsed onto a coverage that carried a full limit last term. Each is a coverage change even when the front page reads the same. Record prior-versus-renewal for every figure so the file shows what you checked, not just what you noticed.

• Each-occurrence limit, general aggregate, and products/completed-operations aggregate — compared independently, prior vs. renewal.
• Personal and advertising injury, medical payments, and damage-to-premises-rented-to-you limits.
• Any endorsed sublimit that replaced a full limit, and any deductible or self-insured retention increase.
• Whether the general aggregate applies per policy or per project/location — a change here is easy to miss and material to the insured.

Flag the manuscript endorsements — never interpret them mechanically

Standard ISO forms have library meaning: CG 20 10 means the same thing on your renewal as on anyone else's, so it can be compared deterministically. Manuscript endorsements — carrier-drafted, non-standard language with no ISO number — do not. A renewal that carries a manuscript endorsement the prior policy didn't is a change that requires a human to read the actual wording, because guessing at non-standard language is how errors enter the file.

The right discipline is human-in-the-loop: diff the standard forms mechanically so nothing standard slips through, and surface every manuscript or carrier-specific endorsement for a person to read and judge. That is exactly how BindCheck handles it — the deterministic engine compares the ISO/AAIS forms schedule and the dec-page numbers, and anything non-standard is flagged for your review rather than silently passed or auto-interpreted.

Turn the review into a documented, repeatable check

A GL renewal review is only worth as much as the record it leaves. The value at E&O time is a dated artifact showing which forms, limits and endorsements you compared and what you flagged — not a memory of having glanced at the renewal. Doing this by hand for every GL renewal in a busy season is where the discipline breaks down, and where the silent drops sneak through.

BindCheck runs the whole comparison from two uploads: the expiring GL policy (or the accepted quote) as the baseline, and the renewal. It returns an E&O-defensible checklist of every CG form, limit, deductible and endorsement that changed — added, dropped, reduced, edition-changed or missing — each finding cited to its source page, with manuscript endorsements flagged for you. The diff is deterministic: the same two documents always produce the same result. See our general liability renewal checking solution for how it fits a GL book, or run your first renewal check free below.

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