ACORD 101 Form: Additional Remarks Schedule Explained

Last updated July 2026.

The ACORD 101 is the Additional Remarks Schedule, a continuation page attached to a certificate of insurance when the wording will not fit in the Description of Operations box on the ACORD 25. It carries the overflow: additional insured wording, waiver of subrogation notes, project names, entity lists and special conditions. It is part of the certificate, and like the certificate it grants no coverage.

If you review certificates for a living, the ACORD 101 is the attachment that decides whether the risk transfer you negotiated actually shows up on paper. A certificate holder who files the ACORD 25 and never opens the attached remarks schedule is filing half a document. Here is what the form is, what belongs on it, what it proves, and how to check it without reading every page by hand.

What is an ACORD 101 form?

ACORD 101 is titled Additional Remarks Schedule. It is a standard ACORD continuation form used alongside other ACORD forms when there is more to say than the parent form has room for. On a certificate of liability insurance, the ACORD 25 has a Description of Operations box that runs to a few lines. The moment an agent needs to list four named additional insureds, quote endorsement wording, or describe a project address, that box overflows and the remainder goes onto an ACORD 101.

The form itself is deliberately plain: header fields identifying the agency, the named insured, the policy number and the parent form it attaches to, then a large free-text remarks area. Nothing on it is coverage. It is a place to write.

What goes on the ACORD 101 Additional Remarks Schedule?

In practice, the remarks schedule attached to a certificate almost always carries one or more of the following:

• Additional insured wording. Which entities are additional insured, on which coverage lines, and under which endorsement form. This is where you find out whether you got CG 20 10 alone or CG 20 10 plus CG 20 37.
• Waiver of subrogation notes. Whether the waiver is blanket or scheduled, and on which policies.
• Primary and noncontributory language. Frequently referenced here rather than on the face of the ACORD 25.
• Entity lists. The owner, the lender, the property manager, the parent company and their officers, agents and employees, spelled out the way the contract requires.
• Project or location detail. Job number, site address, contract number, or the lease and suite the certificate relates to.
• Limit clarifications. Per-project aggregate, umbrella following form status, deductible or self-insured retention amounts.

That is a lot of load-bearing information for an attachment that routinely gets detached in email. If your contract requirements are specific, most of the proof that they were met lives on the ACORD 101 rather than the ACORD 25.

Is the ACORD 101 legally binding?

No. The ACORD 101 has exactly the same standing as the certificate it attaches to, which is none. The ACORD 25 states on its face that the certificate is issued as a matter of information only, confers no rights on the certificate holder, and does not amend, extend or alter the coverage afforded by the policies. Text typed onto a remarks schedule inherits that status. An agent writing "blanket additional insured applies per CG 20 33" on an ACORD 101 has documented a claim about the policy, not changed the policy.

What it is genuinely useful for is evidence and specificity. It tells you what the agent believes is on the policy, in enough detail that you can ask for the right endorsement copy. If the remarks schedule names your entity and cites a form number, you know exactly which endorsement to request. If it says nothing, you have learned something too.

ACORD 101 vs ACORD 25: what is the difference?

The other ACORD forms you will meet in the same stack are the ACORD 27 and ACORD 28 for evidence of property insurance, and the ACORD 75 insurance binder issued while a policy is being finalized. Our guides to the ACORD 25 form, evidence of insurance vs certificate of insurance and insurance binder vs certificate of insurance cover how those differ.

Who fills out the ACORD 101?

The insurance agent or broker who issues the certificate does, at the request of their client, the named insured. You as the certificate holder do not fill it out, and neither does the vendor directly. That chain matters when something is wrong: if the remarks schedule omits your entity, the fix goes vendor to agent, not vendor to you. Telling a vendor to "add it themselves" produces an altered document, which is worse than an incomplete one.

It also explains a common failure. Agents work from whatever the vendor tells them the contract requires. If the vendor never sent the insurance article to their agent, the remarks schedule will reflect the vendor's summary of your requirements rather than your requirements. That is the single most common reason a certificate comes back nearly right and still fails review.

How to review an ACORD 101 on a vendor certificate

Work through it in this order and most problems surface in under two minutes:

1. Confirm it is attached at all. If the ACORD 25 says "see attached" and nothing is attached, the certificate is incomplete. Ask before filing.
2. Match the policy number and named insured on the remarks schedule against the parent certificate. A remarks page from a different policy or a different insured entity happens more than you would expect.
3. Check your legal entity name letter by letter. "Riverbend Property Management LLC" is not "Riverbend Properties LLC." A mismatch here is the failure that shows up at claim time.
4. Read the endorsement forms cited and confirm they are the ones your contract requires. Ongoing operations only, or ongoing plus completed operations? Blanket or scheduled?
5. Check the coverage lines. Additional insured on general liability but not on auto or umbrella is a partial result, and contracts routinely require all three.
6. Request the endorsement copies for anything material. The remarks schedule points at the endorsement; it is not the endorsement.

On construction and lease exposures the entity list is where this most often breaks, because the required parties are buried in the agreement rather than on the certificate request. If you manage a portfolio, pulling the required insured entities and insurance wording out of each agreement into a structured summary of the terms each lease actually demands gives your certificate reviewers something to check the remarks schedule against, instead of guessing at what the contract said.

Frequently asked questions

What is the ACORD 101 form used for?

It is used to continue text from another ACORD form when the parent form runs out of space. On a certificate of insurance, it carries the additional insured wording, waiver of subrogation notes, endorsement form numbers, entity lists and project details that will not fit in the Description of Operations box of the ACORD 25.

Does an ACORD 101 provide coverage?

No. It carries the same disclaimer as the certificate it attaches to: information only, no rights conferred on the holder, and no amendment to the policies. Wording on a remarks schedule documents what the agent understands the policy to say. Only the policy and its endorsements actually grant coverage.

Can a certificate holder request an ACORD 101?

Yes, indirectly. You tell the vendor what your contract requires, the vendor instructs their agent, and the agent issues the certificate with a remarks schedule if the detail will not fit. The most reliable approach is sending the vendor the insurance article of the contract and asking them to forward it to their agent unedited.

What is the difference between ACORD 101 and ACORD 855?

The ACORD 101 is a general purpose additional remarks schedule that can attach to many ACORD forms. Other numbered ACORD forms are purpose built for a specific line or state filing. If you receive a form number you do not recognize alongside a certificate, check what parent form it references before assuming it changes anything about the coverage.

Why did my certificate come with three attachments?

Typically an ACORD 25, one or more ACORD 101 remarks schedules, and copies of the actual endorsements. That last group is the one worth reading closely. A vendor whose agent sends endorsement copies unprompted is usually a vendor whose compliance is in order.

Reading remarks schedules at scale

One certificate with one attachment is a two minute job. Four hundred vendors, each renewing annually, each with a certificate plus a remarks schedule plus endorsement copies, is thousands of pages a year, and the failure mode is not misreading them. It is not opening them. Attachments get separated from the parent email, remarks schedules get filed without review, and a renewal quietly drops an entity from the list that nobody notices until a claim.

That is what automated extraction is for. Certificate of insurance verification reads the ACORD 25 and its attached pages together, pulls the entities, endorsement form numbers, limits and dates off both, and checks them against the requirements you set once, so a missing additional insured surfaces as a stated reason rather than a page nobody opened. If you are automating the ACORD stack specifically, how to automate ACORD 25 certificate processing covers the workflow, and how to read a certificate of insurance walks through the parent form box by box. For the endorsement distinctions the remarks schedule cites, see CG 20 10 vs CG 20 37 and blanket waiver of subrogation endorsements.