Additional insured wording is the text a producer types into the Description of Operations box to describe additional insured status, and on its own it grants nothing. The ACORD 25 says so in its own IMPORTANT block: a statement on the certificate does not confer rights to the certificate holder in lieu of an endorsement. Wording that names a form number, such as additional insured per CG 20 10 04 13 and CG 20 37 04 13, is worth reading. Wording that says additional insured as required by written contract is a conditional claim that rests on an endorsement you have not seen. Upload a certificate above and the AI reads the box, pulls the form numbers out of it, and tells you which requirement is genuinely evidenced.
Last updated August 2026
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These are the phrases that turn up in the Description of Operations box of a real ACORD 25. They are not equivalent. Two of them name evidence, the rest describe an intention. The difference decides whether you are covered when a claim lands.
| Wording in the Description of Operations box | What it actually means | Proves additional insured status | Ask for this instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Certificate holder is an additional insured | A bare assertion typed by the producer. It names no form, no edition and no trigger, so nothing about it can be checked against the policy. | No | The endorsement page, identified by form number and edition date. |
| Additional insured as required by written contract | This points at an automatic status endorsement such as CG 20 33 or CG 20 38. Those forms only pick up a person or organization once a written contract requiring additional insured status actually exists between them and the named insured. | Only if the contract exists and the automatic endorsement is on the policy | A copy of CG 20 33 or CG 20 38, plus confirmation your signed contract carries the insurance requirement. |
| Additional insured if required by written contract | The conditional if is doing real work here. It usually means the producer has not confirmed a contract exists and is transferring that question back to you. | No | The endorsement page, and written confirmation the requirement was met. |
| Additional insured per CG 20 10 04 13 and CG 20 37 04 13 | Names the exact scheduled forms attached to the policy, with edition dates. Ongoing operations plus completed operations, on the 2013 editions. | Yes, once you see the endorsement pages | Nothing more, other than the endorsement copies themselves. |
| Blanket additional insured | Industry shorthand for an automatic status endorsement. It describes how the endorsement attaches, not how far the coverage reaches, and trade guidance discourages using the word at all. | No | The form number behind the word blanket, normally CG 20 33, CG 20 38 or a carrier specific equivalent. |
| Additional insured for ongoing operations | An accurate description of CG 20 10 on its own. It also tells you completed operations are missing unless another form supplies them. | Partly, and it flags a gap | CG 20 37, or CG 20 39 or CG 20 40 on policies written after December 2019. |
| ABC Corp, its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors and employees are additional insureds | A list copied out of the contract. Most automatic endorsements only reach the organization that signed the contract, so the extra names on the list may pick up nothing. | Rarely, and not from a blanket form | A scheduled endorsement such as CG 20 26 naming the entities, or CG 20 38 where the carrier allows it. |
| Coverage is primary and non-contributory | A declaratory statement about how two policies will share a loss. Published agent guidance says a certificate should not carry this statement, because the certificate cannot make it true. | Not relevant to additional insured status, and not evidence of priority either | CG 20 01 for the general liability policy and CA 04 49 for the auto policy. |
| Additional insured may apply | Non committal by design. It records that the producer will not say yes. | No | A clear yes with the form number, or an admission that the endorsement was never issued. |
| See attached endorsement | Fine when the endorsement is genuinely attached. It is one of the most common wordings on certificates that arrive as a single page PDF with nothing behind it. | Only if the attachment is really there | The attachment. Reject the submission until the pages arrive. |
The Description of Operations box is free text. It is written by a person under time pressure at a busy agency, it is not filed with anyone, and by law in several states it is not allowed to say most of what certificate holders ask it to say.
Directly beneath the header of every ACORD 25 sits the IMPORTANT block: if the certificate holder is an ADDITIONAL INSURED, the policy(ies) must have ADDITIONAL INSURED provisions or be endorsed, and a statement on this certificate does not confer rights to the certificate holder in lieu of such endorsement(s). The certificate is telling you, in its own words, to go and read something else. Guidance published by the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas puts the same point plainly: an additional insured is not added to the policy just because the certificate says the certificate holder is an additional insured.
Automatic status forms grant additional insured standing to any person or organization the named insured has agreed in writing to add. The IIAT best practices manual is blunt about the consequence for producers: you must verify that there is a contract between your insured and the entity requesting additional insured status. If you do not, and you issue a certificate showing the entity as an additional insured when there is no contract, the endorsement does not cover that entity, because there is no contract. Unsigned change orders and purchase orders that never came back are exactly where this fails.
CG 20 10 covers the additional insured while the named insured is working. The word ongoing was added in the 1993 revision specifically to end coverage when the job ends, and the effect is well documented: once the subcontractor's work is complete, the general contractor no longer has coverage under the policy. A liability claim on a building shows up years later, which is the exact moment ongoing operations wording has already stopped helping you.
Texas Senate Bill 425, in force since 2012 and implemented by Texas Department of Insurance rules, prohibits an agent from issuing a certificate that alters, amends or extends the coverage or terms and conditions provided by the policy, and prohibits any reference to a legal or insurance requirement contained in a contract other than the contract of insurance itself. Several states now run similar statutes. When your requested wording comes back refused, the agent is usually complying with the law rather than being difficult.
Contracts routinely require a parent, its subsidiaries, affiliates, co-lessees, joint venturers, directors, officers and employees to be added. Trade guidance is clear that most automatic additional insured endorsements only cover the person or organization that signed the contract, while the insured is performing operations for that person or organization, so a blanket form cannot deliver the list. The names get typed into the box anyway and everyone assumes the job is done.
A reviewer checking two hundred certificates a month reads the limits, glances at the ADDL INSD column and moves on. The Description of Operations text is the part that carries the qualifiers, the form numbers and the conditional language, and it is the part that gets skipped precisely because it is prose rather than a number.
COISoftware extracts the Description of Operations text as language, not as an image, pulls out the form numbers and edition dates it contains, and compares what the wording claims against the endorsement pages the vendor actually supplied.
Every phrase in the box is captured, including the qualifiers. As required by, if required by, may apply and subject to are treated as the conditional language they are, rather than being read as a yes.
CG 20 10, CG 20 26, CG 20 33, CG 20 37, CG 20 38, CG 20 39, CG 20 40, CG 20 01 and their auto equivalents are recognized wherever they appear in the wording, with the edition date attached, so a 10 01 edition is never mistaken for an 04 13.
A phrase in the box is recorded as an assertion. An endorsement page supplied with the submission is recorded as evidence. The vendor record shows which requirements have both and which have only the first.
Wording that grants ongoing operations only, with no CG 20 37, CG 20 39 or CG 20 40 anywhere in the packet, is flagged against contracts that require completed operations coverage instead of quietly passing.
When the box names a parent plus affiliates and officers, the requirement is matched against whether a scheduled endorsement covers those names or whether only an automatic form was supplied.
Last year the box read per CG 20 10 04 13 and CG 20 37 04 13. This year it reads as required by written contract. That downgrade is the kind of change a renewal review misses and a stored comparison catches.
Five checks, in the order that exposes problems fastest.
The ADDL INSD column is one letter wide and carries no detail at all. The real content is in the Description of Operations box at the bottom of the form, and sometimes on an attached ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule. Read that text first, because it is what qualifies the checkbox.
Wording that says per CG 20 10 04 13 is checkable. Wording with no number is not. Note the edition date as carefully as the number: CG 20 10 10 01 and CG 20 10 04 13 are different grants, and the 04 13 and later editions cap your coverage at whatever your own contract required, so a broad certificate cannot give you more than your contract asked for.
If the wording says as required by written contract, the endorsement is almost certainly an automatic status form and your standing depends on a signed agreement. Confirm your contract is executed and that it contains the insurance requirement in writing. If the wording says if required, treat it as unverified until the producer says otherwise in writing.
Ongoing operations only means CG 20 10 territory. If your contract requires completed operations, look for CG 20 37, or CG 20 39 or CG 20 40 on policies written after the December 2019 revision. If your contract requires primary and non contributory treatment, that is CG 20 01 on the general liability policy and CA 04 49 on the auto policy, not a sentence in the box.
Ask for the endorsement by form number and edition date rather than asking for better wording. Store the endorsement pages alongside the certificate, because at claim time the adjuster reads the endorsement and the certificate is worth very little on its own.
Most pages on this topic paraphrase. Below is the operative language, transcribed from published copies of the forms and from agent trade guidance, so you can compare the sentence on your certificate against the sentence in the policy.
The IMPORTANT block prints on every ACORD 25 (2016/03) directly under the header disclaimer:
IMPORTANT: If the certificate holder is an ADDITIONAL INSURED, the policy(ies) must have ADDITIONAL INSURED provisions or be endorsed. If SUBROGATION IS WAIVED, subject to the terms and conditions of the policy, certain policies may require an endorsement. A statement on this certificate does not confer rights to the certificate holder in lieu of such endorsement(s).
Read the last sentence twice. It is the form conceding that the sentence somebody typed into the box is not the thing that protects you. The box the wording lives in is labeled DESCRIPTION OF OPERATIONS / LOCATIONS / VEHICLES, and the label continues: ACORD 101, Additional Remarks Schedule, may be attached if more space is required.
The grant on the scheduled ongoing operations form reads:
WHO IS AN INSURED is amended to include as an additional insured the person(s) or organization(s) shown in the Schedule, but only with respect to liability for bodily injury, property damage or personal and advertising injury caused, in whole or in part by: 1. Your acts or omissions; or 2. The acts or omissions of those acting on your behalf; in the performance of your ongoing operations for the additional insured(s) at the location(s) designated above.
Three limits are built into that sentence. Coverage runs only to the names in the Schedule, only for liability caused at least partly by the named insured, and only during ongoing operations. A certificate that says additional insured per CG 20 10 is therefore telling you completed operations are not included, whether or not the person who typed it realized that.
Automatic status forms do not use a schedule. The grant instead reaches:
any person or organization for whom you are performing operations when you and such person or organization have agreed in writing in a contract or agreement that such person or organization be added as an additional insured on your policy. Such person or organization is an additional insured only with respect to liability caused in the performance of your ongoing operations for the additional insured.
This is where certificate wording and reality part company most often. The guidance published by the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas spells out the trap for the producer issuing the certificate:
you must verify that there is a contract between your insured and the entity requesting additional insured status. If you do not and you issue a certificate of insurance showing the entity as an additional insured when there is no contract, the additional insured endorsement does not cover that entity as an additional insured because there is no contract.
No contract, no coverage, regardless of what the box says. If your vendor started work on a purchase order and the master agreement is still unsigned in somebody's inbox, an automatic endorsement has picked up nothing at all.
Blanket is not a form name and it is not an ISO term. It is shorthand the industry uses for automatic status. Independent Agent magazine put the question to a panel of coverage experts in March 2024 and the answers were consistent. One response: the word blanket should not be used, and just like the term all risks, blanket should be avoided in communications with insureds. Another: using the term blanket basis is an attempt to describe the coverage and should be avoided. The recommended alternatives name the document instead of characterizing it, for example an additional insured as per the attached endorsement, or certificate holder is an additional insured if in compliance with the conditions of the attached endorsement, with the form number given.
The practical version for a certificate holder: when you see the word blanket, ask which form number it stands for. There is nothing wrong with an automatic endorsement. There is something wrong with not knowing which one you have.
Certificate wording is regulated in a growing number of states. The Texas statute is the most quoted example. Senate Bill 425 took effect on January 1, 2012 and the Texas Department of Insurance passed implementing rules in 2013. Under them, agents are prohibited from issuing a certificate that alters, amends or extends the coverage or terms and conditions provided by the insurance policy, and prohibited from issuing a certificate that contains a reference to a legal or insurance requirement contained in a contract other than the underlying contract of insurance. A certificate may refer to the language in the policy. It may not describe, explain or define obligations under your construction contract.
The task force that wrote the IIAT best practices manual reduced this to a rule for the box: use the Description box and ACORD 101 to disclose specific coverage or exclusion endorsements attached to the policy, using the form number and exact title only, and do not add words or phrases in the Description box or on ACORD 101 that reflect or imply coverages or conditions not explicitly granted by the policies.
That rule is worth internalizing on the receiving side too. The best wording you can be sent is a form number and an edition date. Anything more descriptive is either redundant or is the agent saying something the policy does not.
Requests to type coverage is primary and non contributory into the Description of Operations box are constant, and the guidance is unusually direct about them. From the IIAT manual: do not just add primary and non contributory wording to the certificate of insurance, because the insured's general liability policy may not be primary and non contributory and you cannot make it happen just by saying so on the certificate. The same source adds that even where an endorsement is attached, the certificate should not make a declaratory statement such as coverage for the additional insured will be primary and non contributory.
What you want instead is CG 20 01 on the general liability policy, or CA 04 49 on the business auto policy. Those are the documents that change the other insurance condition. There is no ISO workers compensation equivalent.
A typical contract clause asks for the owner, its subsidiaries and affiliates, its co-lessees and joint venturers, and their directors, officers and employees. The IIAT manual notes that insurers resist this because the list does not limit the extension of coverage to persons directly related to the work being performed, and that most automatic additional insured endorsements cover only the person or organization that is a signatory to the contract while the insured is performing operations for that person or organization, so these endorsements cannot be used to comply. ISO introduced CG 20 38 in the 2013 revision partly to accommodate these requests.
So if your contract carries a list and the certificate carries a blanket phrase, the two do not line up. Either narrow the contract clause to the entities that matter, or require a scheduled endorsement, or require CG 20 38 by name and confirm the carrier writes it.
A property manager receives a certificate from a roofing contractor. The Description of Operations box reads: Certificate holder and owner are additional insureds on a blanket basis as required by written contract. Primary and non contributory. Waiver of subrogation applies.
Three separate problems sit in those three sentences. Blanket on a blanket basis names no form, so the scope is unknown and the wording may not even reach the owner as a second entity. As required by written contract makes the grant contingent on a signed agreement that the property manager has not confirmed. Primary and non contributory is a declaratory statement the certificate is not permitted to make, and it names no CG 20 01. Nothing in the box mentions completed operations, so the roof leak that surfaces in three years is very likely outside the grant.
The reply that fixes it is short. Ask for the general liability endorsement pages by form number and edition date, the CG 20 01 if primary and non contributory is contractually required, and confirmation that the signed agreement containing the insurance requirement is on file. That request takes one email and it is the difference between a compliant file and a file that looks compliant.
It is the free text a producer types into the Description of Operations box to describe how additional insured status applies. The wording describes the endorsement, it does not create it. The ACORD 25 states that a statement on the certificate does not confer rights to the certificate holder in lieu of an endorsement, so useful wording is wording that names the endorsement form number and edition date.
The wording that holds up names the document. Something in the form of additional insured per CG 20 10 04 13 and CG 20 37 04 13, or additional insured as per the attached endorsement with the form number given, is checkable against the policy. Agent trade guidance recommends stating the form number and exact title rather than trying to summarize what the coverage does.
Blanket is industry shorthand for an automatic status endorsement such as CG 20 33 or CG 20 38, which adds anyone the named insured has agreed in writing to add rather than naming them in a schedule. Coverage experts writing in Independent Agent magazine in 2024 recommended against using the word at all, because it describes how the endorsement attaches and says nothing about how far the coverage reaches.
Only if a signed contract requiring additional insured status actually exists. That phrase points to an automatic endorsement, and those forms reach a person or organization only once the named insured has agreed in writing to add them. If work started on an unsigned purchase order, the endorsement has picked up nobody, whatever the certificate says.
In the DESCRIPTION OF OPERATIONS / LOCATIONS / VEHICLES box near the bottom of the form, above the certificate holder block. When the wording runs long it continues on an attached ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule. The one letter ADDL INSD column in the coverage grid is a separate indicator and carries no detail.
No. Additional insured status comes from an endorsement attached to the policy. Guidance published by the Independent Insurance Agents of Texas states it directly: an additional insured is not added to the policy just because the certificate says the certificate holder is an additional insured. The certificate is evidence that somebody says an endorsement exists.
Usually because a state statute forbids it. Texas Senate Bill 425 and the implementing Department of Insurance rules prohibit an agent from issuing a certificate that alters, amends or extends policy coverage, or that references a legal or insurance requirement contained in a contract other than the insurance contract itself. Several states run comparable laws. Ask for the endorsement instead of better wording.
The ADDL INSD column is a single tick per policy line saying an additional insured endorsement is claimed to be present. The wording in the Description of Operations box is where the qualifiers live: which entities, which form, which edition, ongoing or completed operations, and any conditions. A tick with no wording is the least informative combination on the form.
No. Agent best practice guidance says a certificate should not make a declaratory statement such as coverage for the additional insured will be primary and non contributory, because the certificate cannot change how two policies share a loss. The endorsement that does that is CG 20 01 on the general liability policy and CA 04 49 on the business auto policy.
Only if the wording says so or names a completed operations form. CG 20 10 grants ongoing operations, and the word ongoing was added specifically so that coverage for the additional insured ends when the work ends. Completed operations require CG 20 37, or CG 20 39 or CG 20 40 on policies written after the December 2019 revision.
Usually not. Most automatic additional insured endorsements reach only the organization that signed the contract, while the named insured is performing operations for it. Contract clauses that also name subsidiaries, affiliates, joint venturers, directors, officers and employees generally need a scheduled endorsement, or CG 20 38, which ISO introduced in 2013 partly for this purpose.
Ask for the endorsement pages by form number and edition date, not for the certificate to be reissued with stronger language. Reissued wording costs the vendor nothing and proves nothing. An endorsement copy is the document a claims adjuster will read, and it is the only thing that settles whether you are an additional insured.
The full CG 20 series that sits behind the wording.
The certificate of liability insurance, field by field.
Every ISO endorsement form behind a certificate.
CG 20 01 and CA 04 49, and why the box cannot replace them.
Two different names in two different boxes.
Confirm a certificate reflects a real, current policy.
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