What Is an ACORD 25? The Certificate of Liability Insurance, Explained

Before anything else, the form carries a block of small text stating that it is issued as a matter of information only, confers no rights on the certificate holder, and does not amend or alter the coverage in the policies listed.

That sentence is the whole nature of the document. A certificate is evidence, not a contract. It reports what a policy said on the day it was issued. It does not create coverage, change coverage, or guarantee coverage still exists tomorrow.

Everything else in this guide follows from that.

Producer (top left) — the insurance agency that issued the certificate. This is who you contact when something on the certificate is wrong or missing. Worth noting: the producer, not the insured, is usually the fastest route to a corrected certificate.

Insured (below the producer) — the business the policies belong to. Check this against the entity you actually contracted with. Subsidiaries, DBAs, and similar-sounding names are one of the most common mismatches, and a certificate for the wrong entity is not evidence about yours.

Insurers A–F (right side) — the carriers writing each policy, each assigned a letter. The letters map to the coverage rows below, so a row marked “A” is written by whichever carrier is listed as Insurer A. Each carrier's NAIC number appears here too.

The middle of the form is a table, one row per coverage type. Reading left to right:

INSR LTR — which insurer (A–F) writes this line.

Type of Insurance — usually Commercial General Liability, Automobile Liability, Umbrella/Excess Liability, and Workers' Compensation and Employers' Liability. Under general liability you will also see checkboxes for occurrence vs. claims-made and how the general aggregate applies.

ADDL INSD — a checkbox indicating that an additional insured endorsement applies to that line. Narrow column, easy to miss, and it matters enormously.

SUBR WVD — a checkbox indicating a waiver of subrogation applies to that line.

Policy Number, Policy Effective Date, Policy Expiration Date — self-explanatory, with one catch covered below.

Limits — the dollar amounts, which differ by coverage type:

• General liability: each occurrence, damage to rented premises, medical expense, personal and advertising injury, general aggregate, and products/completed operations aggregate.
• Automobile: usually a combined single limit.
• Umbrella/Excess: each occurrence and aggregate.
• Workers' compensation: statutory, plus employers' liability limits for each accident, disease per employee, and disease policy limit.

The catch on dates: every policy has its own expiration date, and they rarely align. A certificate can show general liability expiring in March and auto expiring in August. If you are tracking one date per subcontractor, track the earliest one — that is the first day coverage lapses.

A free-text box in the lower middle of the form. Agents use it for anything the grid cannot express: project names, job numbers, and — critically — endorsement language.

This is where additional insured status, waiver of subrogation, and primary and non-contributory wording most often appear. It is also where conditional phrasing lives:

Additional insured status applies as required by written contract.

That is not a statement that you are an additional insured. It says you are one if a written contract requires it. If your subcontract is silent, the condition is not met. Reading this box is not optional.

Bottom left. The party the certificate was issued to — usually you.

Being the certificate holder confers no coverage and no rights. It means the document was addressed to you. This is the single most common misunderstanding about the form, and it is worth its own guide: additional insured vs. certificate holder

Bottom right, above the signature. Language stating that the issuing insurer will endeavor to provide notice of cancellation in accordance with the policy provisions.

Note the hedging. Older versions of the form promised notice more firmly; current language ties it to what the policy actually requires. Do not treat the certificate as a guarantee that you will be told when a policy is cancelled. Policies get cancelled mid-term, and a certificate issued in January says nothing about March.

The signature of the producer's representative. An unsigned certificate is not a finished document — if you receive one, ask for a signed copy.

Four things worth internalizing:

1. It does not prove endorsements exist. The ADDL INSD and SUBR WVD checkboxes are the insurer's representation, not the endorsement itself. The endorsement is a separate document — forms like CG 20 10 (ongoing operations) and CG 20 37 (completed operations). When it matters, ask for the endorsement pages. We cover why in why the certificate isn't enough
2. It is a snapshot. It reflects the policy on its issue date. Coverage can lapse or be cancelled the next day, and the certificate in your file will look exactly the same.
3. It does not change the policy. Nothing an agent writes in the Description of Operations box adds coverage that the policy does not provide.
4. It says nothing about claims history or financial strength. For that you would be looking at loss runs or an EMR letter — different documents entirely.

When a certificate arrives:

1. Does the Insured match the entity you contracted with?
2. Is every coverage you require present, with its own row?
3. Do the limits meet your requirements — both per-occurrence and aggregate?
4. Are all policy dates current, and do they cover the whole period the work will run?
5. Are ADDL INSD and SUBR WVD checked on the lines that need them?
6. Does the Description of Operations box add or condition anything?
7. Is your company named correctly as certificate holder?
8. Is it signed?

If something is wrong, contact the producer. Reissuing a corrected certificate is routine work for an agency and usually takes hours, not days.