ACORD forms are the standardized insurance documents the industry uses to communicate coverage. If you collect proof of insurance from vendors, tenants or subcontractors, you receive a small handful of them, and they do not all mean the same thing. The ACORD 25 confers no rights at all. The ACORD 75 binder is an actual contract. This page lists the forms you will actually be sent, states what each one proves, and flags which ones give you legal standing. Upload a certificate above and the AI reads it for you.
Last updated August 2026
Upload your certificates of insurance
Drop files here or click to upload
Up to 50 files
Uploading...
The ACORD forms that arrive when you ask a vendor, tenant or subcontractor for proof of insurance. The right hand column is the one that matters in a dispute: most of these documents are informational and create no obligation to you whatsoever.
| Form | Official title | What it proves | Rights it confers on you |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACORD 25 | Certificate of Liability Insurance | A point-in-time summary of the liability policies in force: carriers, policy numbers, effective and expiration dates, and limits for general liability, auto, umbrella and workers compensation. | None. The form states on its face that it is issued as a matter of information only and confers no rights upon the certificate holder. |
| ACORD 24 | Certificate of Property Insurance | The property equivalent of the ACORD 25. Used when the party asking has no insurable interest in the property, for example a municipality confirming a permit condition. | None. Informational only, the same as the ACORD 25. |
| ACORD 27 | Evidence of Property Insurance | Property coverage proof issued to a party that does have an insurable interest, typically a lender, mortgagee or loss payee. Used for personal lines and smaller commercial risks. | Limited. It names your interest, which is more than a certificate does, but the policy still governs. |
| ACORD 28 | Evidence of Commercial Property Insurance | The commercial version of the ACORD 27, used for commercial property where a lender, mortgage holder, loss payee or additional insured has an interest in the property. | Limited, in the same way as the ACORD 27. |
| ACORD 75 | Insurance Binder | Temporary coverage issued before the actual policy is written. It describes the coverages, limits and conditions that are bound, and typically runs up to 90 days or until the policy issues. | Yes. A binder is a real contract of insurance, not a summary of one. This is the strongest document on this list. |
| ACORD 101 | Additional Remarks Schedule | A continuation page attached to another ACORD form when the wording will not fit. On a certificate it usually carries the endorsement form numbers, additional insured wording, project names and entity lists. | Whatever its parent form confers. Attached to an ACORD 25 it is informational, and it is part of that certificate. |
| ACORD 855 | New York Construction Certificate of Liability Insurance Addendum | A broker-completed disclosure of the exclusions and restrictions that an ACORD 25 cannot show: excluded operations, height and depth limits, which additional insured form is attached, and whether key coverage has been stripped. | None. It states that it does not amend, extend or alter the coverage afforded, but it is the most useful document here. |
Two more families exist that you will not normally receive. The application forms, including ACORD 125 (Commercial Insurance Application), ACORD 126 (Commercial General Liability Section), ACORD 130 (Workers Compensation Application) and ACORD 140 (Property Section), are what a business submits to a carrier to get a quote, so they flow toward the insurer rather than to you. Service forms such as ACORD 35 (Cancellation Request / Policy Release) and ACORD 45 (Additional Interest Schedule) handle policy administration. If a vendor sends you an application in place of a certificate, you have been given a request for insurance, not evidence of it.
The forms are standardized, which makes them easy to file and easy to trust. Trusting them is the mistake, because the most common one on your desk is explicitly designed to promise nothing.
Read the disclaimer block at the top of any certificate. It is issued as a matter of information only, confers no rights upon the certificate holder, and does not affirmatively or negatively amend, extend or alter the coverage afforded by the policies. A file full of certificates is a file full of statements, not coverage.
A certificate reports the state of a policy on the day it was issued. The policy can be cancelled the following week and the certificate in your folder will still look perfect. Nothing on the form updates itself, and most carriers will not notify you.
Vendors send an ACORD 130 workers compensation application when you asked for proof of workers compensation. Tenants send an ACORD 27 when the lease required liability. An application proves somebody asked for insurance. It does not prove they got it.
Endorsement form numbers, additional insured wording and project names usually overflow into an ACORD 101. When a certificate says see attached and the attachment never arrives, the review is incomplete, and a surprising number of certificate files are missing the page that carried the substance.
An ACORD 25 has no field for exclusions. A policy can be gutted by a restrictive endorsement and the certificate looks identical to one on a clean policy. That gap is exactly why New York created the ACORD 855, and why it stays useful outside New York.
So the practical job is not collecting ACORD forms. It is reading them, checking each one against what your contract actually required, noticing which form you were handed, and watching the dates after the fact. That is repetitive, rule-based document work. How to read a certificate of insurance walks the ACORD 25 box by box, and the endorsement numbers that decide whether the coverage exists are listed in our reference table of certificate of insurance endorsements.
COISoftware recognizes which ACORD form it has been sent, extracts the fields as data, checks them against the requirements you set, and tracks the expiration dates without anyone remembering to look.
A certificate, an evidence of property form and a workers compensation application look different and mean different things. The AI identifies what it received, so a vendor who sends an application instead of a certificate does not quietly pass review.
Carriers, NAIC codes, policy numbers, effective and expiration dates, each limit, and the free text in the Description of Operations box come out as structured fields you can filter and report on rather than a PDF somebody has to open.
When the Description of Operations box says see attached, the remarks schedule is where the endorsement list actually lives. It is read together with the parent certificate instead of being treated as a separate file nobody opens.
Set the limits and endorsements each vendor tier owes you once. Every incoming form is scored against the right list, and you see the specific reason a certificate failed rather than a pass or fail flag.
The dates come off the certificate itself and drive automatic reminders at 60, 30 and 15 days, so the snapshot problem stops being your problem.
Certificates arrive as email attachments, faxes, scans and photographs taken on a job site. The AI reads all of them, so the form does not have to arrive clean to be processed.
Everyone who requires proof of insurance ends up managing ACORD forms. Vendor insurance compliance software is the general purpose page, subcontractor COI tracking is the heaviest case because endorsement requirements stack there, and property managers handle both tenant and vendor certificates across a portfolio. For the extraction itself, see ACORD 25 OCR.
Four checks that catch almost everything a quick glance at the limits will miss.
Check the form number printed in the bottom left corner. An ACORD 25 is proof of liability coverage. An ACORD 27 or 28 is property. An ACORD 125, 126, 130 or 140 is an application and proves nothing at all. Sending the wrong form is the most common vendor error, and it usually is not deliberate.
Tip: The form number and edition date are always in the bottom left, in the format ACORD 25 (2016/03).
Compare the policy effective and expiration dates against the period the vendor will actually be working. A certificate issued today for a policy that expires in three weeks is technically valid and practically useless. Diary the expiration the moment the certificate lands.
This is where the endorsement form numbers, additional insured wording and project references live. If it says see attached and no ACORD 101 came with it, the certificate is incomplete. Ask for the attachment before you accept the file.
The named insured must be the entity you actually contracted with, and the certificate holder must be the entity that needs protection. A parent company on the certificate and a subsidiary on the contract is a gap a carrier will find long before you do.
Tip: ABC Properties LLC is not ABC Property Management LLC when a claims adjuster is reading it.
Short answers to the comparisons people look up mid-review, each linking to the full explanation.
The ACORD 25 is liability. The ACORD 27 and ACORD 28 are property, and they are issued to someone with an insurable interest in the property, usually a lender or loss payee, rather than to a party that simply wants confirmation coverage exists. A landlord asking a tenant for liability proof wants the 25. A bank financing a building wants the 28.
This is the difference between a description and a contract. The certificate summarizes a policy that already exists and grants you nothing. The binder is temporary insurance in its own right, issued before the policy is written, and it binds the carrier. If a vendor needs to start work before their policy issues, a binder is the document that actually protects you. Insurance binder vs certificate of insurance covers the detail.
They are one document. The ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule exists because the Description of Operations box on a certificate is small, and the wording that matters most, the endorsement form numbers and the additional insured language, is exactly what overflows into it. A certificate that references an attachment you never received is an incomplete certificate. The ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule explained.
Because an ACORD 25 has no field for what the policy excludes. New York construction losses kept turning on restrictions that no certificate could reveal, so the 855 asks the broker to state them: excluded operations, building height and depth limits, which additional insured endorsement is attached by form number, and whether blanket contractual liability or the employers liability carve-out has been stripped. The ACORD 855 addendum explained.
Being named in the Certificate Holder box means a copy was mailed to you. That is the entire meaning. Coverage under the vendor policy comes only from an additional insured endorsement attached to that policy, which is why the endorsement form number in the Description of Operations box matters more than the box with your name in it. Additional insured vs certificate holder.
A vendor does not pay their agent for issuing a certificate, so asking for one, or for a corrected one, costs them nothing and is a reasonable request. The underlying insurance is what costs money, and a vendor who resists producing a certificate is usually telling you something about the policy behind it. What a certificate of insurance costs.
ACORD forms are standardized insurance documents published by ACORD, a nonprofit standards body for the insurance industry. They give agents, brokers and carriers a common format for applications, certificates, binders and policy changes. The ones a business receives most often are the ACORD 25 Certificate of Liability Insurance and its ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule attachment.
The ACORD 25 is the Certificate of Liability Insurance, the standard one-page summary of a business liability coverage. It lists the carriers, policy numbers, effective and expiration dates, and the limits for general liability, automobile, umbrella and workers compensation. It is issued for information only and confers no rights on the certificate holder, so it is evidence that a policy existed on the issue date and nothing more.
The ACORD 25 covers liability insurance and goes to anyone who needs confirmation that coverage exists. The ACORD 27 is Evidence of Property Insurance and goes to a party with an actual insurable interest in the property, such as a mortgage holder or loss payee. Ask for the 25 when you need proof a vendor can pay for harm they cause, and the 27 or 28 when you have a financial stake in the property itself.
Both are Evidence of Property Insurance forms for a party with an insurable interest. The ACORD 27 is used for personal lines and smaller commercial risks, while the ACORD 28, Evidence of Commercial Property Insurance, is the commercial version and carries more detail on commercial property coverage, additional insureds and loss payees. Lenders on commercial buildings normally want the 28.
The ACORD 101 is the Additional Remarks Schedule, a continuation page attached to another ACORD form when the wording will not fit in the space provided. On a certificate it usually carries the endorsement form numbers, additional insured language, waiver of subrogation notes, project names and entity lists. It is part of the certificate it is attached to, so a certificate delivered without its referenced 101 is incomplete.
The ACORD 855 is the New York Construction Certificate of Liability Insurance Addendum, attached to an ACORD 25. It asks the broker to disclose what a certificate cannot show: excluded or restricted operations by location, construction type and building height, which additional insured endorsement form is attached, whether primary and noncontributory applies, and whether blanket contractual liability or key coverage exceptions have been removed.
Work from the bottom left up. Confirm the form number and edition, then check the policy effective and expiration dates against your work period, then compare each limit against your contract minimum. Read the Description of Operations box for endorsement form numbers and chase any referenced ACORD 101. Finish by checking the named insured matches your contracting entity exactly.
Proof of coverage is the general term for the ACORD forms that evidence insurance rather than apply for it: the ACORD 25 for liability, the ACORD 24 for property where the recipient has no insurable interest, the ACORD 27 and 28 for property where they do, and the ACORD 75 binder for temporary coverage. Application forms such as the ACORD 125, 126 and 130 are not proof of coverage.
No. The disclaimer printed on the form states that it is issued as a matter of information only, confers no rights upon the certificate holder, and does not amend, extend or alter the coverage afforded by the policies. Courts have generally enforced that language. The documents that actually bind a carrier are the policy itself, the endorsements attached to it, and an ACORD 75 binder.
The Agency Customer ID field at the top of an ACORD 101 and several other forms is the agency internal account number for that client. It exists so the agency can match a continuation page or supplement back to the right customer file. It has no bearing on coverage, but it is useful when you are asking an agent to reissue a document, because it identifies the file immediately.
The certificate itself has no expiration date, but the policies it describes do, and those dates are printed on the form. A certificate is only meaningful until the earliest policy expiration date it lists. In practice you should treat the earliest expiration on the form as the date the document stops being evidence of anything, and request a renewal certificate before it arrives.
The insurance agent or broker completes and issues them on behalf of the insured. A vendor cannot issue their own certificate, which is why an ACORD 25 that arrives as an editable file rather than from an agency is worth a second look. The ACORD 855 is explicitly completed by the insured designated representative, normally the broker, and signed by an authorized representative.
Start tracking vendor certificates of insurance and never miss an expiration.
USD
per month
billed as
$288 yearly
Choose speed vs accuracy when extracting
| Base AI Faster | 2,500 pages |
| Pro AI Best accuracy | 500 pages |
Scale COI compliance across your whole team with automated reminders.
USD
per month
billed as
$888 yearly
Choose speed vs accuracy when extracting
| Base AI Faster | 10,000 pages |
| Pro AI Best accuracy | 2,000 pages |
Enterprise‑grade COI tracking, security, and controls.
USD
per month
billed as
$ yearly
Choose speed vs accuracy when extracting
| Base AI Faster | pages |
| Pro AI Best accuracy | pages |
Custom workflows and deployment for AI automation at scale
